


NIGHTCREEPERS

by Sweetlit



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood Drinking, Blood and Violence, Death, F/M, Gay, Gay Sex, Gen, Kissing, M/M, Murder, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Semi-Public Sex, Slash, Vampire Hunters, Vampire Sex, Vampires, m/m relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2019-07-16 05:18:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 44,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16079246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sweetlit/pseuds/Sweetlit
Summary: Reiko is a man in his twenties like many others, until one night a monster takes away the most precious thing in his life: his brother. This will start a bloody hunt for the killer, but everything is not as it seems, and he will soon realize it, paying an even higher price.





	1. Reiko

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: slash and blood drinking, vampire sex and future characters death. Gore.
> 
>  
> 
> This is the translation from italian of my original work: NIGHTCREEPERS-I camminatori del buio, please forgive my bad English since it's not my native language!

A cemetery.  
The sky was dark: no moon, no stars, just clouds, as if waiting for something.  
Even the air was standing still as I walked across the musk-covered tombs and overgrown vegetation.  
I didn't know where I was, but I was under the impression that I knew the place, that I had already been there.  
I knew exactly where to go, as if a voice was pointing me the direction to follow.  
It was almost frighteningly silent: no creaks from the trees, no animal moving between the unkempt bushes, just a vague, imperceptible sound, which grew at constant pace in the dark corners of the garden.  
I was there, but I wasn't: It was like walking out of my body, I had no heart beats and didn't breathe, but I could sense a vague presence into the darkness.  
The trees were so distorted they resembled paintings designed by an hallucinated mind, like a Goya of the late period, to the limits of madness, with those twisted branches stretching towards the violaceous clouds of the heavenly space, dead leaves hitting heavily the ground.  
Everything was bright and dim at the same time.  
When I stopped, it had been in front of a grave, whose tombstone seemed to have been overturned by strange landslides in the ground, lying in small deformed hills around the base rectangle that covered the coffin, a few meters below.  
The sound then rose into crescendo and now I could recognize it for what it really was: a violin, melancholy and distant, yet clearly perceptible.  
I knew the melody, or rather, I remembered it: a slow piece of Bach, which my brother had made me listen to infinite times, when he was still taking lessons. It was his personal favorite.  
At one point, all around the plaque seemed to have stopped, the violin the only living thing that kept me in touch with the reality that surrounded me.  
There was no name on it: it could be anyone's grave, but I knew that it wasn't the case, my ethereal body felt the presence of danger, an evil that I was well aware of.  
The Walkers were there. HE was there.  
Instinctively, I had taken a step back, noticing with horror that I couldn't run, as sometimes happens in dreams, when you want to escape something and your legs seem to move in slow-motion in respect to your pursuer.  
I turned around, but it was too late - with the tail of my eye I saw a shift, then a big bang suddenly silenced the sweetness of the violin, causing the earth under my feet to shake.  
I had stared at the tomb, and then I had seen just what I had feared: a long, thin, white hand stretched out from the ground to the air, withering, as if to breathe in place of the lungs, to reclaim life.  
"My God" I had thought, observing in shock as it bent the fingers until they clutched the ground, looking for a grip, lifting the rest of her body off the soil.  
An arm had appeared in succession, very thin, a shoulder, a part of a bust and, finally, the head, disheveled and blackened by the dust, but clearly visible, pale as death.  
Two luminescent and vitreous eyes had pierced me, freezing the blood in my veins, the mouth had opened in a bestial grimace and I had seen the fangs, long and sharp like daggers, sparkling in the dark background of the cemetery.  
The vampire, or, as everyone calls him, the Nightcreeper, had eyed me from head to toe, then had gotten up and smiled at me. . . or rather, he had GRINNED at me.  
Then everything had disappeared and the landscape had suddenly changed.  
I was no longer in the cemetery, but in my bathroom, in front of the mirror, which I looked at: I knew too well who I had just dreamed about and felt chills running in rivers down my spine in recognizing him.  
It was not my brother, as I had initially believed, but his murderer, the monstrous and horrible Nightcreeper that I had been hunting, to eliminate him forever.  
For a moment, however, I had felt frightened, because I actually lived in the fear of being caught off guard, being forced as I was to fight them undercover, sleeping in a safe place during the day and moving through the streets at night, restlessly, without a destination... just following them down the alleys, where they usually find their victims to lure and destroy.  
There was nothing poetic about this, nothing heroic or altruistic, but something much more tragic: I wanted revenge for how they had massacred my brother, as if he had been a little rabbit in the presence of bloodthirst hunting dogs.  
I would destroy them one by one, until I reached the murderer, the one who that night had taken my brother and drained him, taking him away from a promising life.  
They would all have paid for the mistake made by one, because they were not human, they were not a race, they were just an evil to be eradicated from the world.  
I would have found them and I would have found Carter, the murderer, and when I would have done so, he would have prayed that he would never be reborn.  
In the meantime, I had decided to leave my mark everywhere to let them know I knew how to deal with them and make out of it alive.  
But I hadn't taken THIS into consideration: it was several nights now that I had lost sleep and when I closed my eyes all I could see in front of me was Carter, with his dark hair dyed in metallic gray and black eyes, deep as two pits and bright as lanterns.  
It had become my obsession. And my terror.  
That probably explained my scary dream, and how I was now standing locked in my bathroom, without even knowing how I had arrived there, a flickering neon light that made me look sick and a disturbing buzz in my ears.  
I was completely sweaty, yet I wasn't hot, quite the opposite, I felt completely frozen, with my skin crawling in every free centimeter of its surface.  
I hated to say that, but no matter how much I loathed it, I was afraid of Carter.  
I'm not a superhero with paranormal powers, nor a champion of martial arts, despite having oriental ascendancy, very clearly manifested in the cut of my eyes and in the classic color of my hair, which look made of same variety of silk; the only thing keeping me alive was this craving for revenge that bubbled up continuously inside and looked for my brother's murdered in every Walker that I killed.  
Despite waking up, though, I still had a weird feeling, as if there was something wrong with the scenario around me.  
I had looked down to open the tap, but when I raised my head I was no longer alone: there was Carter, right behind me, no longer covered in dirt, but clean and well-dressed, looking mockingly at me from the mirror.  
I hadn't shouted just because all air had left my lungs.  
Before I could even think of attacking him, he had passed an arm strong like an iron bar around my waist and with his other hand, which had very long nails, had grasped my hair, pulling my head backwards, almost as if to break my neck.  
He had said nothing, only lowered himself down on my jugular vein, grinning in a macabre way and curling his upper lip over his long razors. The light had then completely given way, leaving us in the dark.  
At that point I had really woken up.


	2. Noel and Carter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't believe it had been just a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: bloodsucking, murder, gore

I couldn't believe it had been just a dream.  
It had seemed so real, the details so well outlined and vivid, I could still feel the icy grip of fear in my bones.  
I had opened the French window, going out onto the stone balcony, looking at the city below me that was moving quietly in the darkness of the night.  
People walked, casting their shadow on the asphalt, unaware of what surrounded them, of what was happening not far away, in the alleys, of how a passer-by who accidentally bumped into them could actually be something different, something much more dangerous and treacherous, unaware of the fact that the man with the dog at the corner was not a man at all.   
I caught him by the languid and typical feline pace of his movements, perceiveing him as the monster he actually was, a horrible being who would choose one of the many people down below, at random, and then off them. Just like what happened to my brother Noel.  
But so was their race, so were the Nightcreepers, oblivious to the men and the world around them, capable of only thinking about the animalistic satisfaction of their hunger.  
What actually WAS a Nightcreeper, it was really difficult to define.  
I myself, while fighting them, knew very little about them: that they were an evolution of the common vampire, they could turn into animals, such as black wolves or even panthers, some could split into hundreds of rats or thousands of bats, soaring lightly in the air of the evening.  
With their human form, even if supernatural, they were not able to fly, however, they could make leaps of a terrifyingly enormous height and, peculiar characteristic of their species from which they also took the name, they could crawl along the walls, moving more silent than death behind anyone, to attack them.   
These strange figures, so similar to us humans in the physical structure, were however in all other aspects beasts, even in their own way of living.  
Violence and chaos were at the order of their race, because they lacked a leader, a stronger person who could dominate them. They had no specific rules or laws, except perhaps for the unique and primordial one of not invading the hunting territory of another and of not touching the food (because after all, we were nothing else for them).  
A designated prey, although chosen by chance, was not attacked in a hasty way, indeed, very often was followed and not abandoned until the very last, as they could be patient, but also quite firm and stubborn. Sometimes a Nightcreeper could take months to weave his spiderweb, following for whole nights his chosen victim and spying on it, watching it perform his daily acts until he decided to kill it.  
Time varied from vampire to vampire, and from thirst to thirst.  
In the case of my brother, his death was very rapid.  
I could never forget that night: it was an opaque summer evening, with the sky gray and dark and the moon shining brightly between the swollen clouds, from time to time.  
Noel had gone out with his friends to go to some pub to have fun. . . but he had never returned.  
Usually I had always been the laggard, but that time Noel at two had not yet manifested himself: the concern had invaded everyone at home, knowing how punctual he was and how he would never put anyone in anxiety on purpose. There was something in my brother that touched everyone, a kind of innate goodness that radiated from him, like a beam of light in the surrounding space, and it was for this reason that I came out to look for him, in addition to the natural affection that bound us.  
At the pub I met a boyfriend of his, who told me how he had gone a couple of hours earlier to walk back home, because that evening, despite the bad weather, he had not taken the car.  
I still felt the dread that had pervaded me then: a kind of anguish inside my chest that told me that I would never find Noel alive, that it was too late, as a sixth sense that warned me that by now there was nothing more to do.  
And it had been right.  
I had searched the street backwards, looking down every alley, hoping with all my heart not to find him, to get home and see him with an embarrassed smile on his fac,e while trying to explain the reason for his delay. I hoped not to find his body torn apart by some fierce murderer, but when I had finally turned into the street behind my house, I could never have imagined such a scene.  
Noel had almost managed to reach his salvation and, as I would have discovered later, had also tried to escape from the vampire who had then taken him and killed him, playing with him like the cat with the mouse, deluding him about some possibility of escape, while in fact he had already been dead since the monster had laid his gaze on him. He had lost his battle a few metres from the back door, where something had jumped over him as it descended from the wall, draining him of every drop of blood he had in his body, as well as cutting his head almost cleanly from his neck.  
When I arrived the thing was still there ending his macabre work, stretched out on the lifeless body of my brother: when he heard me arrive he had raised his skull in penumbra (I don't know in what other way to define it) towards the source of the sound, showing me a distorted white face hidden behind two incandescent red holes in place of the eyes and a hair color that I would never ever have forgotten, a shocking metallic gray that can and could only be Carter's.  
I had screamed.  
The beast then stared at me, as if it understood who I was, then snickered and, with a quick glance behind, threw itself like a spider at the wall, overcoming it under my terrified gaze.  
I couldn't believe I had seen it: no one could climb so quickly on a wall!  
When my parents came running out of our house, the tragedy was already over, all that remained was me and Noel's corpse, left to its own in black rubbish bags.  
All this had happened six months ago: since then my life has not been the same.  
I was constantly thinking of Carter, and I feared him, I feared that I could be like Noel, that one day I'd found him behind me without having heard him at all, and that I would end up like this, without dignity, in the middle of a road.  
Noel did not deserve an end like that, no human being, however unclean and cruel, would ever have deserved it, but the thought that it was he destroyed me literally.  
And that grimace, tht sneer printed on Carter's feral face, those hard and sharp features, that slightly triangular eagle nose and those thin lips pulled into an expression of ridicule, those hair! A sign of recognition, a color so disturbing, inimitable. . . . they cried revenge, from every cell in my body.  
With these gloomy thoughts, I had left the balcony, coming back irate and upset into my bedroom, absolutely ignoring the presence of metal hair that had spyed on me until then from the roof above it.


	3. Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was back on the streets hunting, looking for Carter...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: bloodsucking & murder

I was back on the streets hunting, looking for Carter, on a cool autumn evening with a dark and clear sky.  
The stars had already risen and shone like silent beacons in the darkness, the streetlamps dull from the pale and sick light that came and went intermittently.  
The scene repeated itself again, as it always did, night after night, day after day and month after month: I searched, followed... and killed.  
I saw, in each one's of those who died, Carter's twisted face, right before they dissolved into a cloud of dust.  
I hunted and waited with infinite patience to finally meet him, to run into his metal-colored head, to kill him, and finally be FREE.  
It seemed almost a dream, sometimes, like running after a myth, something evanescent, something unobtainable, that actually did not exist.  
Yet Carter was there, he was alive and among us, the informations gathered by my many "prey" confirmed it, without however being able to help me find him: no one knew WHO he really was, nor where he slept in the morning. He was there but it was as if he did not exist, he walked among the others without really having an identity nor a home, yet everyone knew him by reputation.  
Carter was, in fact, a vampire who loved to be noticed: if I knew his appearance so well, it was mostly thanks to the many photos taken in night clubs, where he was often present (it was where he chose his victims, and it was in one of those places that my brother had actually been picked), with his pointed hair and punk clothes.  
In a way, I wasn't becoming any different from him: I too had learned to raise at night, I too was hunting, I too was killing, even though not to feed myself.  
The Nightcreepers were by now aware of who I was, their private executioner, even though they didn't know my whole story or my face, but they knew they had to fear and avoid me, the community had quickly spread rumors around.  
The clock of the old bell tower in the corner of Walpole Street stroke one in the morning, while I spotted out of the corner of my eye my "prey" of that night: a girl in her twenties, with golden skin, black ebony hair and eyes that might have been green, but now shone only a dark red, hidden but clearly visible behind a pair of blue lenses of designer sunglasses.  
Despite myself, I had smiled.  
I had never understood why, I mean they were dead after all, yet I had never seen a Nightcreeper neglected in its looks, as if it was part of their being undead to appear dressed in fashion and well cared for. Even the eldest sometimes let themselves be involved with the most extravagant trends of the moment.  
Carter, with his sickening tin-colored hair, didn't make any distinction.  
So I had followed the girl, what I called a "fresh prey", a victim who had just recently become a vampire and was generally ruthlessly cruel, and followed her undisturbed while she tracked someone in turn: a good looking man in his thirties. She moved languid and sensual as a shadow in the dark.  
When the man stopped to answer a call on his mobile, she too had paused, giving a quick fix to her very long hair and preparing to lure his prey.  
For them it was easier: men were generally less cautious than girls at night, so if a beautiful and young woman halted them to ask to be escorted home (she was very afraid of prowlers) they did not ask themselves many questions, they just DID it with a smile.  
The sham had worked that time as well, naturally, and she had managed to lead him into a dead-end alley by the dim illumination of a single streetlamp.  
I had to intervene quickly and save him.  
I had immediately pulled a stake out of the inner pocket of my long light coat, and approached behind them, remaining in the shadows, ready to take action.  
I had carefully targeted the heart of the vampire, knowing that I couldn't absolutely miss the shot, being that the only point where they were really vulnerable, after which I had raised my arm, but, at that very moment, a noise had distracted me.  
It hadn't been a noise like the others in the alleyway, that had certainly come from above, from the flat roof of one of the dark industrial houses.  
"What the hell. . . ?" I thought, feeling the blood freeze in my veins, suddenly realizing that I hadn't really watched my own back. that night.  
Maybe one of them had guessed my plan and joined the stalking convo? Or was it even...  
...CARTER?  
How could I have been so stupid?  
A moan to my left made me turn around.  
Too late: the female Nightcreeper had unintentionally taken advantage of my distraction and attacked the attractive man, who now laid helpless on the ground.  
The killer was leaning over him, still drinking his thinning blood, swinging on his knees back and forth, holding him firmly in his arms.  
Once finished, she had detached herself from him with a mix of sadness and modesty, kissing him on the lips as a lover and and gently resting his dead body on the filthy asphalt underneath.  
Without even noticing my presence, she had stood up, distractedly dusting the knees of her dark stockings and turned away, to presumably crawl along the wall.  
She hadn't made it: finally, I had recovered and intervened, grabbing her by her right arm and making her turn to look at me in the face, the expensive glasses flying a few steps away.  
She had stared wildly at me, first thinking of who could dare crossing a creature like her, then with amazement and fear, seeing the cut of my eyes, clearly oriental, realizing who I really was.  
"The Vigilante" she had whispered, yanking hard to free herself from my mortal grip.  
"You guessed it..." I had sneered in response, moving my arm back to prepare to strike and showing the wooden stake in its entire length.  
Her regular face had visibly paled: the irises were no longer red because she had satisfied her thirst, yet they were not even green as I had believed, but big and grey.  
She had opened her mouth wide, drawnig two fangs long and sharp like daggers, ready to defend her undead body to the last, but I had not even given her time to breathe, hitting the target at the first blow, knowing for sure that if those teeth had touched me, it would've been the end for me.  
The monster had shouted, desperately looking for a hold on the wall behind, without finding it and ruining on the ground in a whirlwind of bones and ashes, under my cold and satisfied gaze.  
All that was left of her were a pile of clothes and the sunglasses that had fallen off just before.  
I had shrugged, trying to recover and find the strength to return home, but a sudden sound, behind me, had suddenly chilled my soul.  
I had turned around and raised my head: on the roof of the low, gray house, where I had heard the noise before, was standing, clapping his hands more than theatrically, Carter.


	4. Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had been looking for him for so long. . . and now that I had finally found him, I felt completely helpless and paralyzed.

I couldn't believe it.   
The vampire on the roof was Carter!   
I had been looking for him for so long. . . and now that I had finally found him, I felt completely helpless and paralyzed.   
"Reiko!" He had exclaimed, smiling contentedly, as he'd jumped agile as a cat from the roof and landed with great style a few steps from me, in the alley.   
"C-Car. . . Ter" I'd only managed to stutter, like a miserable infant.   
"Bravo!" He had mocked me, collecting the sunglasses that had belonged to the Nightcreeper that I had just eliminated.   
He had watched them carefully, then, judging them to his liking, had folded them up and slipped them into the pocket of his long white-grey coat, a model rather similar to mine.   
"You. . . " I had muttered, trying to express the first rational thought that my mind was able to formulate "You didn't move a finger. . . you were there, and you did nothing to help her!"  
"I don't see why I should have. . . I didn't even KNOW her. . . " he replied, carelessly shrugging his shoulders, looking around in the alley.   
At that point, he had again focused his attention on me, studying me from head to toe.   
"It's YOU then... the cause of our troubles, the Vigilante everyone's talking about . . . - he had squared me, nodding to himself.   
He had approached a couple of steps, intensely sniffing the air, while I, instinctively, retreated to the wall of the small road.   
"Oriental blood, yes. . . " he had murmured, walking around me, studying me ". . . one of the best. . . " he had smirked, licking his lips, with anticipation.  
"Shame I'm only partly asian, then. . . " I managed to reply, but I was irritated to hear how faint and trembling my words sounded.   
I had avoided staring at him because I simply could not: there was something unnatural about him, he was just a very good imitation of a human. It was like one of those sci-fi movie monsters that took over the body of a man to move undisturbed in the midst of others, so similar, yet with something overflowing out of their skin, from their structure.   
"Hmmm. . . " Carter had giggled, complacent ". . . I see that you have found your voice. . . you don't back down easily, don't you?   
I stayed silent, uncertain about what to say.   
Carter had gotten closer, without showing any sign of fear, so I had been forced to look at him fully in the face: he was exactly like the vampire of the photos that I had found, apart from a few more small details, like a piercing that protruded from his lower lip that must have dated back to when he was still a mortal, because the wounds, in the Nightcreepers, healed instantly.   
"I heard you were looking for me. . . to KILL me." He had whispered me, narrowing his big dark eyes. They were disturbing, two deep black mirrors with strange luminous reflections. . . and yet, at the same time, so serious, so penetrating. . .   
By that point I had literally stopped breathing, realizing that I was not at all ready for a direct confrontation and that I was totally unarmed: I had used my only stake on the vampire girl earlier. Would I possibly have the time to collect it if I'd needed it? Maybe not. . .  
"Don't worry, Reiko, I have no intention of hurting you. . . for now." Carter had mischievously joked, reading my mind. Some of them, albeit superficially, could do so, and, apparently, Carter was part of that small number.   
"Let's say you've got me intrigued. Not many humans dare to turn against us. . . surviving, I mean."he had broken out in a macabre laugh.   
I'd felt the hairs on the back of my head stand up to the dark sound of that ugly voice. Something inside of me had cracked, as I'd suddenly realized that that infernal noise was probably the last thing my brother had heard.   
"Listen, you bastard" I'd hissed him, finding inside me enough hate to give the necessary strength to that offense. "You killed my brother. You DRAINED him, and then you laughed at me in the face! If I interest you now, wait until you see me when I'll shove a nice pole up your butt . . . !- I'd stood a few inches from his face, regardless of the fact that he could have detached my head from the rest of the body with a snap of his thin fingers had he wanted to.   
.Just like he did with Noel.   
Despite my angry exploit, however, Carter the vampire had not batted an eyelash, remaining motionless to stare at me, with an indecipherable expression in the pupils.   
Hard to tell what he was really thinking.   
"So you want me dead to avenge your little brother . . . " he had pondered, without taking his eyes off mine for a single moment.   
"I see you're awake. . . " I'd mocked him in return.   
"And would you be willing to die, for it? " He had asked, challenging. "I KNOW that you are unarmed, Reiko. . . it would take me nothing to destroy you. . . "   
For a moment I had hesitated, realizing that I had precipitated things too much: lost in my rage, I had completely forgotten to be at a disadvantage, at the mercy of that ruthless murderer.   
"....But I won't." he had concluded, pulling back a couple steps, turning his back to me.   
"Why not?" I asked him, confused.  
"It would be too easy, to do it now. . . I would take the fun away. . ."   
"Fun? Of what?" I had sensed that there was something else, otherwise he would certainly not have taken the trouble to come talk to me.   
"I am a proud man, Reiko. . . or, better, I WAS. . . I will not steal your blood. . . you will be the one to offer it to me one day."   
I was shocked. That statement just left me stunned.   
"What. . .? Why do you say that?" I was finally able to murmur.   
"I watched you while you thought you were safe. Three months, if you must know. I like your anger, your pain. . . they make us similar. Also, vampire life is terribly boring. . . much more than that of a human. . . and long, terribly long. You've been a good distraction, and I want you to continue to be one."   
So my fear WAS true. In all those long nights of hunting he had followed me, he always had, and I, while hiding to sleep and constantly looking over my shoulders, had never noticed.   
"Why should ever wish to give you my blood? I would never do that, I'd rather cut my veins." I told him with contempt, spitting out the last part of the sentence.   
"You will, believe me. . . immortality is too great a temptation, Reiko. . . and you are lonely. . . just like I am." He'd stated, albeit with sadness.   
Lonely. . . I was struck by that word. Was I really? In fact, since Noel's death, things had changed so much. I didn't have anyone to talk to anymore, who would have believed in the existence of vampires? Not to mention I didn't want the other people I loved to be put in danger.   
"What if I am? You think that's why I'd seek for you? YOU, who did not hesitate to split my brother in two! What tells me I wouldn't end up the same way, huh?" I told him, contemptuous.   
Carter had laughed, looking genuinely amused.  
"You can't understand Reiko, it's still too soon. . . but you'll see, how loneliness is. . . just give her a little more time. . . You'll NEVER be able to hold on."   
"GO TO HELL, Carter!"I screamed at him, annoyed by his presumption. "Sooner or later I'll be able to find out where you're hiding. . . and then you'll get what you deserve!"  
"Oh, I can't wait!" The Nightcreeper had snorted. "When it happens, I'll light a thousand candles for the occasion!" He'd moved further back towards the other end of the wall, preparing to leave the scene. "Now I have to go fulfil my dinner needs. Keep looking for me, Reiko. . . see if you can find me. . . I'll delight myself with your blood!" he'd announced, always with that nerve-wracking attitude, climbing silently like a snake along the filthy wall of the building at an impressive speed.   
In the blink of an eye he had reached the roof, and with one last mocking glance he had vanished into thin air.   
"Laugh all you want, asshole!" I shouted behind him, hoping he'd hear me. "You'll never have anything from me, you understand? NEVER! I'm gonna kill you!"  
I had stood still in the darkness and silence, with the sound of those last sentences echoing through my brain.


	5. Finding Carter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I felt like a mouse stuck in a maze, could I find my way out? Or would have I been locked within the walls and starved to death, watched from above by a silent scientist who studied my movements with interest?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: mentions of violence and slavery

I absolutely had to find Carter.   
The encounter with him had been like a thunderstruck: before, he had been just a distant image in my mind, an idea, an evanescent being, while now. . . he was very real. Vivid.   
The fact that I wasn't up to par during our first meeting, that I behaved like a schoolboy, falling into the trap of his insinuations, had made me nervous, causing me to shake with fury every time my brain replicated the scene behind my closed lids.   
How I hated him.   
He had killed my brother and was making fun of me, treating me like a cat would treat his favorite toy, following me, never losing sight of me, ready to attack me.   
I amused him, I was his pastime, as he'd said that evening, but once he got tired of me what would happen? Would he have me killed ? Or worse?   
I knew some stories, or urban legends, that circulated among those of their lineage: it was said that some of them limited themselves to marking their victims, not bleeding them all at once, but slowly, to better savor the victory, making them suffer atrociously between the pains of their bites and the lethal virus that they entailed, the one that caused the transformation into Servants of the vampire, if the victim had been left alive.   
Others delighted in driving them out of their mind, threatening them, manifesting themselves at night in their beds, when they least expected it, making them live in terror, preventing them from falling asleep even for days, bringing them to the brink, if not beyond, of madness.   
For a small percentage, on the other hand, and these were the worst, there was nothing but blood: they beat their victims and attacked them with a violence that bordered on the limit of reason, they mistreated them, abused them mentally and physically, and, most often, left them alive, but with such a minimal amount of blood in their veins they could barely breathe: in this way they could not escape or try to put up any kind of resistance, they could only wait and accept the evil that was done to them, praying in a fast and rapid death.   
Carter was definitely a mix of these.   
What would have happened to me if I hadn't found him by the end of time?   
I felt like a mouse stuck in a maze, but could I find my way out? Or would I have been locked within the walls and starved to death, watched from above by a silent scientist who studied my movements with interest?   
Everything had a single answer, and my only chance was to catch him quick, eliminate him before being, in turn, suppressed.   
I couldn't stall anymore, I had to get to the heart of the matter: if I really wanted to find Carter's hiding place, all I had to do was play his own game.   
I had to look among his closest companions, rummage, attend the nightclubs where he set foot more often, hurry.   
Walking quickly under the arcades, at sunset, I thought of all these things.   
The air was already turning quite cold, but the feeling I had on my skin was pleasant; who knew how it was for those creatures, how they felt (if they still felt something) about touching things, or the wind. . .   
People walked around me, observing me, but without really seeing me: no one noticed my face, I was just one of many that you could meet while you took a walk in the city center, without any sign of particular distinction.   
Some of the Creepers were already in circulation, I could well recognise them by their movements. One of them, above all, had immediately attracted my attention: Raglan, a Servant isolated from the rest of the group, skeletal and rachitic, with long nails and a milky blind eye, completely bald.   
Raglan had never been very lucky, probably born brain damaged and then turned into a slave, forced to feed on the blood of animals, his was the classic story of the man who tried in vain to please the powerful, of course without ever succeeding.   
Everyone despised and avoided him, even the freshest blood drinkers always steered away from him.   
With a little smile, I had moved in his direction: I had never really considered him before, and yet he could have helped me, with the right amount of pressure applied to him.   
I had followed him as he dragged himself into an alley, growling and spitting at every leap his little twisted body made.   
"Raglan" I called while he was rummaging around a garbage can.   
He had turned with a movement that didn't seem human, but not even animalistic: despite his horrible appearance, he was probably the exponent who most represented the characteristics of the Servants of the Nightcreepers, poor unwilling monsters who crawled like worms on filthy floors, who had the task of providing food to their masters.   
Servants are created by the bite of vampires: some substance present in their saliva, able to infect human blood, slowly transforms a normal person into a kind of hominid subject to its creator, without causing his death. They had certain peculiarities typical of the undead, but were as fragile as a human being; they could be killed without much difficulty.   
Raglan was holding a mouse still alive in his mouth. His inexpressive eye had opened wide in recognizing me.  
"The Vigilante!" He had mumbled, dropping the carcass he was chewing on and showing two rows of gums without teeth, apart from his canines, of course.   
He had pulled back, winding through the shadows that stretched along the little road.   
I had approached a few steps, while he was dripping red-yellowish drool on his chin and on the dusty rags he was wearing:   
"Don't. . . don't kill me."  
I looked at him with compassion: maybe I would have done him a favor instead, to get him out of the way.   
"No, I won't. . . If you tell me what I want to know." I answered him, assuming a rather intimidating expression.   
Raglan had looked at me with his good eye, which was of a disturbing tangerine color.   
"Yes. . . yes. . . at your command!" He exclaimed, throwing himself to the ground.   
I had done everything possible to keep myself from laughing: if only the poor man had realized his potential. After all, I was only a human being, he could have really hurt me, if only he had understood it. . .   
"I want to know where Carter is." I said, folding my arms, hoping that the position would play in my favor.   
The pile of bones screamed, throwing his hands into the air and scratching his skinny cheeks over and over again in the heat.   
"NO!" He had repeated, banging his forehead on the sidewalk, then he had jumped to grab at my shoulders, cutting off my breath.   
"He'll cut my throat if I tell you!" he'd cried a few inches from my lips, his creepy empty eye fixed on me.   
Some splashes of saliva flew over my coat, corroding the light tissue.   
I had tried to ignore my inner scream for that disgusting vision and I had unwillingly grabbed him by the neck, shaking him.  
"I'll be the one to cut your throat if you don't talk, you bastard!" I'd warned him, narrowing my dark almonds in two menacing cracks.   
Raglan had whined, both for the strenght of my iron grip and for the fear of speaking.   
"Well?" I had growled, bringing our faces closer, holding my breath for the terrible smell of putrefaction and rottenness that emanated from him.   
I saw him nodding vaguely, before releasing an uncertain: "Fine"  
By then I had let him go, causing him to collapse heavily on the concrete below.   
"Come on." I had encouraged him coldly, dusting the hand with which I had held him on the coat and then placing them both on my hips.   
"I. . . I don't know where he is. . . " he'd started by massaging himself painfully on the injured side, which was filled with reddish bruises. But when he saw my expression, he quickly added: ". . . But I know who could tell you!"   
I bent over in front of him, at his level, looking at him carefully.   
"Watch your mouth, if I find out that you lied to me. . ."   
"No, no!" He had frantically shaken his head to reassure me. The bruises on his throat accentuated, showing his vulnerability ". . . Trevor knows! Ask him."  
I took a deep breath at hearing that name.   
TREVOR.   
One of the most dangerous Nightcreepers that was in circulation.   
Did he really know where Carter was?   
"OK , Raglan. Thank you." I murmured, raising back up, uncertain about my footsteps. I wasn't sure I wanted to meet him, much less pull that information out of him.  
"Don't tell him about me!" Raglan had begged me, still lying on the dirty sidewalk.   
I turned in silence to look at him: poor creature, who had ever had the courage to make a Servant out of such a wretched being, and then abandon him to himself? Who was cruel enough not to kill him? Maybe Carter? Hard to tell...   
"Don't worry, you're safe." I nodded, turning to leave  
". . . At least for the moment. . . " I still couldn't help but think.


	6. Trevor and Jesse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's a bad idea, Reiko. You know you're playing with fire, right?"

I had to talk to Trevor.   
This is what Raglan told me to do, and it wasn't a joke.   
The idea of having another meeting with him didn't appeal to me at all, and not only because I knew that Trevor was one of the most feared and respected vampires, but because we had a score to settle.   
During my first steps into the world of vampires, I had observed with great attention and soon learned who was really important and who was in the darkest recesses of food chain, ignored and despised by all the others. A name often echoed in the mouths of many, the name of Trevor, which seemed to be, as I had discovered later, a pusher, which procured "special" victims for rather wealthy customers.   
His job in the underworld consisted in kidnapping or, more simply, GRASPING, humans who were very much in sight, or, as it happened just as often, children and young women, sometimes even pregnant, all for old vampires who had been very rich in life and now were willing to spend more money to drink a different kind of blood, that had something more, a richer flavor that could excite them, since, for most of the time that passed, they were bored and lay inert in their laziness.   
Nightcreepers like Trevor were the worst we could deal with, so he was the first one on my blacklist of pests to be eliminated.   
Despite my decision, however, the question wasn't so simple: Trevor was a much sought-after dealer, but at the same time, very hated and envied, even by his own clients, since he invested most of his earnings in villas and luxury venues (he even owned a huge disco in the city centre, the Kryon, from where he extended his long claws over the rest of the urban territory), and also because Nightcreepers generally hated to feel dominated. As a result, he often went around with bodyguards (undead like him, all from the slums of the city) who protected him and cared for his every need.   
Getting to Trevor would have been like launching a declaration of war: even though they envied or hated him, the Nightcreepers needed him, if I had dared even touch him with a finger, I would have been dead in less than a second.   
I couldn't hit him directly, but I could go through different ways, but this choice of mine had turned out to be a big mistake; I had decided, after having followed him and studied him for a long time, to hit him in what had seemed to be his only weak point: sex.   
His sexual tastes were very doubtful: he slept smoothly with both men and women, so he was probably bisexual, although he seemed to prefer young boys to mature ladies. His last conquest was a novice called Jesse, of whom only the name and age of his death, 19 years old, was known.   
Few had seen his face, but his particular beauty was praised by the lucky few who had had the opportunity to look at him. It seemed that Trevor was particularly jealous of him, and that was very peculiar, since he generally behaved as if he had been made of ice.   
This sudden weakness for the boy, even if it could only be of a physical nature, had led me to believe that it was the right button to press.   
How wrong I was!   
I hadn't understood at all what kind of bond ran between Jesse and Trevor: it wasn't just sex, but something much more complex and dangerous.  
Jesse was a novice, so he needed a powerful man to protect him, while Trevor loved to be surrounded by beauty, but their relationship didn't stop there, I had only figured it out after attacking the young man to kill him.   
Although I'd taken him by surprise, once he had left his lover, he was able to fight me, throwing himself into a window to escape me and seriously injuring himself in the face: being a fresh blood, his healing power was not as strong as that of the elders, so he would carry the scars of my attack for quite some time.   
This had made Trevor furious, prompting him to consider me much more than just a nuisance: from that moment on I had become part of his black list and had to learn to guard my persona from him and his henchmen.   
The fact that he and Jesse knew Carter's hideout puzzled me anyway: the two Nightcreepers didn't see Carter favourably just as I did, they considered him a threat to their power, even if the silver-haired bastard seemed to have very different interests in mind, than getting involved in a fight for the conquest of the market. Trevor was probably having him stalked as a precautionary measure, or was planning to kill him and get him out of the way before he could get him into some serious trouble.   
In the latter case, I realized, I could've been able to snatch him the information I needed, by offering him my services against Carter. . . if I could get to talk to him in one piece and still alive . Not that I had much choice, after all: if I kept waiting, the silver bastard would certainly come to find me, and I wasn't entirely sure I could beat him in an open fight . Carter was one of the most insidious creatures, so I couldn't underestimate him.  
I had spent a few nights wandering, reflecting, and finally I had decided and opted for what seemed to be the best solution, even if it was the riskiest.   
I went looking for Trevor.   
It wasn't really difficult to find him: every night he visited the Kryon, where he was regularly contacted by some of his customers, therefore it was enough for me to lurk at the stage entrance, where he was used to exit to avoid unpleasant meetings, and wait patiently.   
Weather had begun to change: the cold was much more pungent in the late hours and soon the snow would certainly arrive. Memories of my brother Noel, who adored ice so much as a child, had bounced back in my mind, carrying with them an immense pain.   
"Too early for snow". A voice had suddenly said, shaking me from my thoughts.   
I had raised my eyes: it came from an indefinite and hidden point of the roof of the restaurant.   
A chill had suddenly ran over me, while I remembered how Carter used to follow me in every move I made. . . maybe he had noticed my intentions and decided to play ahead killing me on the spot? Hard to say. . .   
"Carter?" I called in the dark with a vague tremor in my voice.   
"It's a bad idea, Reiko. You know you're playing with fire, right?" The person on the roof had replied, showing himself to the electric light of the sign.   
It really was him.   
I had instantly snorted, turning my head to one side.   
"I see you still enjoy following me. . ." I had pointed out, pissed. ". . . And reading my mind."   
"Not that there is much to look at. . . all those boring and repetitive thoughts about your brother. . . quite masochist, Reiko! Even if, lately, I have perceived something new in your mind. . . " he had mocked me, unsheathing his fangs, of which he was evidently very proud.  
"You said it yourself, that I had to look for you. . . " I had replied, joining him in his sneer, relegating my panic in a recess of the head.   
"You chose the worst method." I was told by the vampire, who seemed to be having more and more fun.   
A knot had tightened my stomach, while I admitted to myself that he was probably right.   
"Yeah? Well, not that I had options . . . " I had shrugged carelessly, looking distractedly at my shoes.   
The tin-haired vampire had stared at me, almost surprised, in silence.   
"I'm not kidding. You'd better stay away from him. . . " he had frowned.   
"What, are you worried about me now? You fear that he'll drink all of my blood, instead of YOU? - I'd attacked him, annoyed by his abusive behaviour.   
Carter had giggled, opening his mouth to certainly throw me one of his sharp jokes, but stood suddenly stucked with a strangely alarmed expression all over his face. He was certainly feeling a presence, the presence of another undead, and, judging by his reaction, it just had to be. . .   
"Trevor. He's on his way. " Carted had wheezed, for once looking nervous .   
I had almost burst into a violent laugh, despite the very unpleasant situation: I had never seen him so worried before.   
Suddenly, he had turned his black wells towards me, leaving me once more frozen in their depths.   
"Go away, Reiko. I mean it." He had intimidated me, making the phrase resound more like an order than a warning.   
"Fuck you, Carter!" I fought back, pretending carefully to despise the danger.   
He had thrown me one last intimidating glance, after which he had risen from his prone position and had vanished into thin air, leaving me alone with my doubts in front of the back door opening.


	7. Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had looked right into his pupils: was I willing to put my life on the line to find that monster?   
> Yes, I was. I'd even go to Hell to get him and make him pay for what he did to my brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: blood sucking, death threats

Six bodyguards, all vampires, at least two meters high, left the open door at the back of the bar, followed immediately by a shady figure dressed in black, pale, emaciated, athletic and powerful at the same time: Trevor.   
He had very black hair, cut short to the sides of his head and left long for the rest, which fell on his shoulders in a dark wave, and a long septum that pierced the middle of his aquiline nose.   
The expression of the eyes, brown with reddish scales, was almost in every occasion grim, as if he was unable to feel anything but hatred or anger. When he stared at you with that fierce look, it was like he was carving a hole in your soul.   
As the door rolled back squeaking and closing, a small slender figure had come out at the last moment, passing by a whisker from the small gap left, trotting immediately at the vampire's side.   
Even though I couldn't see as much as them in the dark, I had recognized him from the vaguely languid movements, as well as from the blond colour of the hair, which contrasted in a clear way with the one of the other vampire: it was Jesse.   
Seen side by side, they couldn't seem more different: Trevor, over six feet high, could easily mix with the bodyguards around him, while Jesse, who barely reached five feet two, looked almost like a child or a girl, compared to the others.   
That was my moment: I could still choose whether to run away and give up my crazy plan, or put it to action, risking seriously to have the head severed off me.   
The thought of Carter, with his irritating grin, had given me enough determination to choose the second option.   
He had to pay for what he had done to my brother.   
Taking a deep breath, I came closer, praying that the giants near the two would not land me to the ground before I could open my mouth.  
I had barely approached them, that Jesse had sensed my presence in the air, and had looked around agitated, as if he had smelled a fire.   
He had clung to Trevor, whispering something in his ear, and he had turned around his malevolent gaze, more powerful than that of the younger vampire, trying to find me.   
I saved him the trouble by calling him out.   
"I'm here, Trevor." I said, as I entered the reddish beam of light projected by the neon above the door, giving up my hiding place.   
It was showtime: now he'd listen to me, or he'd definitely kill me.   
Jesse, when I appeared, had started hissing like a cobra, instantly retracting into the space between Trevor and the door, while the six guards had woken up and immediately snapped forward to catch me.   
I had raised my hands above my head looking at the tall vampire straight in the eyes: he seemed the only one in the group to have kept his cool and composure, planted firmly in his position to stare back at me.   
I already had at least a pair of hands around my neck, when the order had started from his mouth:   
"Stop!"  
The six cabinets were evidently confused, and hesitated uncertainly for a couple of seconds, before letting me go.   
Jesse had come out of his improvised hideout with a loud sneer, annoyed that his boyfriend had not commanded to crush my bones.   
He had opened his mouth to talk, but a side glance of his lover was enough to silence him.   
"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you right now." Trevor said to me. His face was like marble: inexpressive and hard at the same time.   
It took me a moment to collect the ideas, so that I could expose them to him without making them seem ridiculous: Carter was a nuisance to the power accumulated by Trevor, it was true, but if our little pact came to light, it would mean the end for him. Vampires don't deal with men, much less with the murderers of their kind, we're just food for them.   
Of course, Carter's interest in me was peculiar. . . but it wasn't the right place or moment to think about that.   
"Because I have a deal for you." I answered dryly, wetting my lips and realizing that they were arid like the desert.   
"Unless it's your head on a silver platter, you can disappear. " He grunted, turning his back on me to leave.   
I had to play my hand right, or I'd never learn about Carter's hideout. And I absolutely needed to find him, if I wanted the chance to face him on an equal ground.   
"Not even if it was about CARTER? " I had shouted, spelling out every word with care to make sure that he heard me, despite his abilities.   
Trevor hadn't stopped at all, continuing on his way, but Jesse for once had turned out useful to me, taking him by the arm, curious.   
The darker vampire then snorted soundly, turning to address me: "I don't give a damn about that little dick!" He had thundered, lowering his eyelids eloquently, but it was clear that he was lying.   
"Bullshit, Trevor! I know Carter bothers you, even if I don't know exactly why. . ."   
Actually, maybe I could see one reason: the tin-haired vampire possessed a temper that could become a big problem for anyone.   
Maybe that was why many of the Nightcreepers looked at him with rancor or suspicion: he wasn't the type to make friends easily. . .   
Anyway, the tone I had used towards Trevor was a bit too aggressive, in fact now he was staring at me with death in his bloody irises.  
"You're not the first, anyway. I'm looking for him too!" I'd tried to save it, hoping he wouldn't break my neck bone in two.   
Luckily for me, the big vampire that evening seemed to be open to negotiations, in fact, at my last statement, he had raised an eyebrow, interested.   
"Well?" He asked, cutting it short.   
Here was my chance.   
"I can help you get rid of him... permanently." I announced, hoping that he wouldn't burst into my face laughing.   
Trevor had, in fact, giggled, in a tone that, in someone else's mouth, would have been amusing. . . but in his resounded terribly gloomy.   
"YOU? And why couldn't I? "he laughed mockingly, opening his arms, and revealing under his coat leather pants covered with studs. Typical of his character.   
I had smiled in turn, having that answer ready:   
"Don't joke Trevor, you know you can't kill him! If the other vampires found out about it, you'd be dead before taking a single breath!"   
It was true: if he had ventured to eliminate a Nightcreeper by his own hand, especially one in sight as Carter, known by many, would have been a too bold of a move, a powerful declaration of war. Many would have looked at him with suspicion, as having a leader for their race was absolutely unacceptable. They would have lynched him and burned him alive to the point of turning him into a pile of ashes.   
When he heard it, the fun (if he could ever feel it) had vanished from his face.   
"Right" he'd grunted, annoyed. ". . . Then let's put it this way: why should I trust YOU? Especially after this." He had grasped Jesse under his chin and brought him forward, to make it better visible to my human eyes.   
As I had guessed, his wounds hadn't healed yet: a large cut ran across his right cheek and violet eye, which was half hidden under the eyelid torn by the cutting of the glass.   
The other eye, which was pale blue instead, stared at me with a mixture of accusation and contempt.   
"I'm sorry, nothing personal" I had lied to the young vampire, looking at him: he was really beautiful as they said, with delicate features, a button nose, big eyes and white complexion, under a cascade of blond locks.   
"You're sorry? You ruined his best side!" Trevor had growled, letting him go and piercing me with his eyes. "Tell me how I could trust you, after you dared to challenge me in this way. "  
Challenge him! He clearly took it personally...  
"By bringing you Carter's head." I had replied, putting myself with my arms folded, hoping that he would not notice how much my hands were shaking at that moment.   
The conversation was taking a dangerous turn, and if Trevor had gotten angry, it would have been the end for me.   
"Hm!" He exclaimed, making a frightening and inhuman start with his head: any living being would surely have found himself with the skull hanging on his back, had he done it with the same violence ".. . And you would risk your little, fragile life to do me a favor? " He had raised the other eyebrow, doubtful.   
"For personal reasons." I replied, stone cold. "I told you that I am also looking for him."  
"Aah, look, look. . ." he had malignantly sneered: it was unbelievable, whatever expression he took, he always and only seemed a monster. I couldn't understand how someone could sleep with him, especially someone like Jesse. . .that looked exactly the opposite.   
"I hope yours is a valid reason, Reiko. . ." it was the first time that he called me by name, however, said from his lips, I did not like at all how it sounded " . . . Although I do not think that you have bothered to come here just to announce me this . . . " he had stared me with those tawny irises. " . . . You want something from me, correct?"   
So, we finally got to the point.   
"Yes." I admitted, not knowing how to snatch him the information I needed otherwise.   
Trevor's eyes went wide: he bursted into a violent and macabre laugh, deforming his face and making it, albeit unintentionally, even more monstrous.   
Jesse had been watching us in silence, as if that didn't impress him.   
"Right!" he had cackled. "Why don't you ask me to bring him to you in person?"   
"Trevor. . . " I had begun, rolling my eyes, but I couldn't finish the sentence that one of his long, white hands had closed on my throat.   
"You realize what they would do to me if this came to their attention?" He had gritted his teeth, which were unusually long and curved.   
"Yes, but. . . "   
"As you said before, they would cut my head off from my neck before I could even say AH!" He had increased his grip, sticking his thumb into my jugular vein.   
"Trevor. . . Let go. . . " I could feel the air starting to leave my lungs.   
"It's a big favor, that you're asking me. . . " He continued, feeling the flow of my blood palpitating through the skin of his finger, closing his eyelids in ecstasy for a moment.   
Not knowing what to say, and feeling a strange buzzing in my ears, I had nodded, just hoping he wouldn't bite me, or it would be worse than death.   
In that position, I was totally powerless.  
"Good" had exhaled Trevor in a guttural tone. He had reopened his eyes, staring at me with two completely red irises, this time, indicating his thirst.   
He had massaged my neck always in the same place, then, at the last moment, he had moved his thumb towards the nape of my neck, sticking the nail in the flesh, causing me to moan in pain.   
When he had finally retracted his hand, my blood dripped along his finger: he had brought it to his mouth, greedily sucking it, as if it were the best of wines, the eyeballs rolling back into the orbits, shivering with pleasure.   
He came back a few seconds later and whispered:   
"Your blood. . . as a token. If you fail, Carter won't be the headless one."   
These were therefore the terms of the agreement.   
I had looked right into his pupils: was I willing to put my life on the line to find that monster?   
Yes, I was. I'd even go to Hell to get him and make him pay for what he did to my brother.   
I nodded slowly, sealing the deal.   
Trevor had shaken his head in turn, thoughtfully scratching the tip of his nose. "Carter is not far from here: his base is in a crypt of the cemetery in the town of St. James. You can't be wrong. " He told me.   
St. James. . . in hearing it, I almost missed an heartbeat! I got it all wrong from the very beginning, convinced that Carter was hiding in a sumptuous building, here, in the city.   
I had again focused my attention on Trevor, who was staring at the blood that was now leaking from my neck.   
He had stretched out one hand towards me, to take more, but Jesse had grabbed his wrist halfway through, looking at me crookedly and dragging him away.   
Trevor had let himself be led, but had casted a ravenous glance at me from above his left shoulder, murmuring, as they disappeared into the alley, a hoarse and eager:   
"Oriental blood. . . the best. . . "


	8. Sepulchre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't believe that Carter had chosen this as his hiding place: he always seemed to me to be one of those vain city vampires, who loved the chaos of discos, bars and everything else, and yet. . . maybe I didn't know him at all.

The more I thought about it, the harder I could believe it.  
I was sitting in my car, a metallic-coloured Land Rover, listening to the rhythmic drops of rain falling on my windshield.  
St.James: a small village situated on the slopes of a steep and stony mountain, far from any sign of civilization. One of many that you could see in the old horror films of the production company Hammer.  
It still didn't seem possible to me that Carter had chosen it as a hiding place: he always seemed to me to be one of those vain city vampires, who loved the chaos of discos, bars and everything else, and yet. . . maybe I didn't know him at all. Or maybe, in that godforsaken place, he felt safer.  
Until then.  
However, locating the cemetery, the only one in existence, had not been so easy: the locals had, centuries before, decided to bury their dead in a remote place, almost impossible to reach by car. It was as if they didn't care about visiting the deceased, but kept them as far away from them as possible.  
Mine was just a hypothesis, of course, but the truth was even more mysterious since none of the villagers were inclined to talk about the reason. People were very reluctant to exchange confidences with strangers, and it was already a miracle that I had managed to get myself explained where exactly the cemetery was located.  
They didn't trust an oriental man like me, and looked with strange fear at the dark color of my hair.  
After all, given my extravagant interest in graves, they were right to doubt, even though I had come to do them a favour.  
Once I had finally managed to reach the necropolis, I had turned off the engine and I had looked at the scenery in front of me with my mouth open, totally amazed.  
There was something so familiar about that landscape. . . old gravestones of dirty, gray tombs that came out of the ground twisted, with many of the inscriptions almost completely erased, statues of angels and saints gathered in prayer that lacked parts of their faces or hands, and sepulchres, some small, other large, that popped up like daisies, everywhere.  
A spectral image to say the least: it must have been years, decades that anyone set foot there. The ancient part of the necropolis that had now been replaced by the new, was in a state of complete abandonment, half-covered by the wild growth of plants.  
Despite everything, however, the feeling of having already seen that place persisted: that sky, dark and ash-colored, those gravestones, worn out by the weather and the years, those trees . . .  
I had taken a slight step, moving with uncertainty the rusty gate to enter the now abandoned space.  
The grass and brushwood grew undisturbed, curling around my feet and causing me to continously stumble.  
I had stopped about in the middle of the cemetery, looking around me, finally remembering.  
That place, sad and desolate, had been in my dream, that horrible nightmare about Carter that had haunted me weeks before.  
But where was he?  
According to the dream, he should have been in a freshly excavated grave, like a freshly buried dead man. . . instinct, however, told me that this was not possible: only a novice vampire could choose such a stupid hiding place.  
No, Carter needed somewhere to rest in peace, sheltered from the deadly rays of the sun, but, above all, from prying eyes... and hands. A place with a door equipped with a solid latch.  
A SEPULCHRE.  
The thought had crossed my mind as fast as a flash, making me look around, searching for clues.  
There were many tombs, as large as mausoleums or as small as arches, but they seemed similar to each other, without any distinction.  
My wondering would have been longer than expected, unless I had been able to come up with something.  
I then walked around the cemetery again, staring at every single detail of every single tomb in my mind, scrutinizing, analyzing, and trying out the locks.  
Some of them had given way under my fingers, others had fallen long before due to rust or bad weather.  
None of them could have been Carter's house, so the circle narrowed.  
I had moved to the northern side, observing a small group of sanctuaries with a thoughtful frown. I noticed something in what looked like a niche dug out of the marble of one of the mounds, now dirty and blackened by the years.  
Inside the niche there was a statue: it depicted a tall, emaciated man with his hands joined in front of his chest in a prayerful position, his face wrinkled and his eyes closed in the ecstasy of the moment.  
It must have been the tomb of a very religious man, who had probably performed charitable acts in life and wanted to carry the sign of his faith beyond death.  
I was examining his features, when my eyes had fallen on something that protruded from his knuckles: a thread.  
I had narrowed my eyelids taking a step forward to focus better: it was not possible, after all that time. . .  
I had stretched my thumb and forefinger to grab it, but I had immediately refrained with a curse: I had cut myself.  
Only then did I understand: the thread was a WIRE, that was how it could remain stuck in the hands of the holy man for so long!  
Chuckling like a fool, I went back on my footsteps, stucking my ankles in the grass.  
I sighed, coming down to extricate myself, when a small glow in the vegetation had attracted my attention; intrigued, I had lowered my hand in the messy tangle, extracting what looked like an ancient rosary (or, at least, what was left of it).  
The grains were made up of white hard stones, held together by a rigid and rusty iron wire. The thread was broken far away from the gem-studded crucifix that shone at the bottom of the chain, as if . . . as if someone had torn it apart from its original position.  
I had turned around, casting a sneering glance at the statue of the saint: since it had certainly not been the work of a thief, it could only be a matter of. . .  
I had put the beads in my pocket, knowing that I could never use them on Carter, however, they could always come in handy.  
Taking a last quick look at the forest around, to verify that no one in the village had followed me, I stood in front of the entrance to the sanctuary, right next to the niche with the sculpture.  
A chain and a padlock in more than excellent condition barred the door.  
"Carter, Carter. . . " I had smiled, pulling out nippers from the flaps of my coat, cutting the rings with a dry blow. The whole thing had collapsed to the ground in a terrible clutter, but it didn't concern me, since the Nightcreepers, while sleeping, were deaf to any kind of external disturbance.  
I had made a slight pressure on the door, which had immediately opened wide, without even creaking on the hinges: it must have been well oiled.  
"Stupid" I had murmured between my teeth, not believing my pupils: could it be that Carter was so naive? He wasn't a newbie, yet all his hideout missed was a nice welcome mat laid out to welcome vampire hunters!  
Shrugging, I had laid the cutter on the ground, taking from another of the inner pockets of my jacket a hammer and a pole.  
Once armed, I headed towards the inside of the tomb, completely dark except for some timid ray of light that penetrated through cracks between the stones.  
I had reached the center, noting that there were two coffins made of stone; one of them, however, had been pushed into a corner, and laid there in a transverse position.  
Obviously the holy man had had a wife, and it had nothing to do with Carter. The one that was to be his coffin for daytime rest, in fact, dominated in the middle of the room in all its "glory".  
I had snorted, rolling my eyes, annoyed by his narcissism, resting both hands on the lid and putting me laboriously to work.  
Against all possible predictions, it had moved without opposing excessive resistance, exposing the upper half of the mortuary bed to dim light.  
My blood suddenly turned to ice, ad I realized with horror that what was lying in the coffin was not Carter at all!  
I had expected to see his face, without the usual smile of mockery, abandoned in his sleep, but all I saw was just a horrible skeleton!  
"What the hell. . . ?!" I had exhaled, incredulously, the hammer and pole falling to the floor, a sudden panic growing in my chest when someone had grabbed me by the shoulders and blown into my ear:  
"I'm not that stupid, Reiko."  
Carter.


	9. Challenge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You want to kill me." He said the phrase by looking me right in the eye.  
> "Yes." I answered him without hesitation

"I'm not that stupid, Reiko." Carter blew into my ear.  
My breath cut off in my throat, as I heard, like in a distant echo, the sound of the hammer and the pole that ended up spinning on the ground.  
Bony, icy fingers closed between my shoulders and neck, making me shiver.  
"Carter. . . " I exhaled, trying to regain control.  
Rivers of cold sweat had dripped down my back, weighed down by my dark coat.  
"That's right." Was his answer, as the very long, pointed nail of his thumb passed through the hair at the nape of my neck.  
Exhaling violently, I turned around to face him.  
He had quickly retracted his hands, not expecting that gesture of mine, transforming in less than a nanosecond his surprised expression into one of pure amazement.  
"Hmm, you're brave. I could have killed you, but you handled the danger." He had put himself with his arms folded and his legs crossed, unleashing his hateful smile.  
I had looked at him uncertainly: he sat over the abandoned stone coffin in the corner, which was, however, hermetically sealed, so he must have heard me enter.  
"Yes, Reiko, you've been naive." He nodded, jumping down from the grave and planting himself very close to my face.  
His looked different: his hair was always styled with gel, but in a different shape, now they were taking up those skunk hair hairstyles that were so fashionable, and also the color was varied: he must have dyed them black.  
"What the hell. . . ?" I whispered without realizing it.  
Carter had burst out laughing irreverently, as usual.  
"Yes, I've decided to change. . . to give you a hard time in finding me..." he had thrown a side glance at me, snapping the piercing of his lower lip against his teeth.  
"What, you thought I wouldn't recognize you?" I had mocked him, while moving my eyes to the stake that had fallen to the ground.  
The vampire had giggled, shaking his head. He resembled a bad parody of Christopher Lee.  
"And you thought that it would be so easy to kill me? "He had snorted vaguely with his nose, more out of habit than out of real necessity, staring at me with those deep black eyes.  
"I've never have..." I sassed, peeking at the stake. I had to learn to carry one as a spare, it was already the second time that I found myself in that situation, alone and unarmed with him.  
"Reiko." the Nightcreeper had sighed, reading my mind.  
I hated when he acted like that.  
"What?" I laughed at him. "You know why I'm here, right, Carter? You invited me, after all, or did you forget?"  
I had leaned slightly forward to give weight to my words, but keeping myself at a safe distance. . . if there was one.  
"Reiko, how could I forget you? One day you'll be all mine, body and soul." He had said languidly, staring at the artery in my neck.  
"I doubt it." I sneered, not knowing exactly how to reply.  
"I see that you have carefully avoided following my advice and staying as far away from Trevor as possible."  
"For a start, your "advice" sounds almost like a threat, and you killed my brother, so I don't see why I should trust you or listen to you."  
Despite his contempt for my words, Carter had not batted an eyelashe - in the literal sense of the word - and seemed to have no intention of doing so for much longer, which made him extremely unnatural, more than he already was.  
"Stupid twat..." he had finally stated. "But I'm glad you came. I would have preferred this matter to remain between the two of us, but now you're here, and that's all that matters."  
"What do you mean?" I asked him, suspicious.  
If he thought I was just here to put my head on a silver platter, he was so wrong.  
"You want to kill me." He said the phrase by looking me right in the eye.  
"Yes." I answered him without hesitation.  
"But you also want me to suffer, don't you? I beheaded your brother, after drinking his blood to the last drop . . . you really wanted to sneak in and kill me in my sleep as you tried to do just now?" He had chuckled, unmasking my rather vile plan.  
"I. . . no." I admitted, ashamed of myself and wondering how only I could think of committing such an act of cowardice.  
Noel deserved a lot sweeter revenge than that: Carter should have begged me to take his life, to save him from further suffering. He should have prostrated himself at my feet, suffered the pains of Hell.  
"All right, then" he nodded, collecting my weapons from the grounf and handing them to me. "Come back tonight and find me. It'll be a fair fight. I'll be waiting for you."  
Come back at night... it would have been anything but fair: Carter's senses and powers would have increased, and I would certainly have been at a disadvantage. And yet it was what I wanted, to face him and win him with my bare hands, to be able to say that I did it without cutting corners.  
"Swear" I hissed him after a moment of pause.  
"I swear to you on Noel's grave, Reiko. I'm not a coward, you have my word." He answered seriously.  
For the first time I saw him looking like an adult and responsible person.  
"Fine, I'll be back after sunset... you better be here." I threatened him with a side glance, not completely trusting him, even though, inside of me, for some obscure reason, I was sure he would keep his word.  
Cursing myself mentally for my doubts and for the dread that I couldn't help feeling every time I saw him, I turned around and moved to get out, when I looked around better and only then did I notice a number of things that had escaped me before: there was an ancient and dusty table hidden in a corner of the crypt; above it lay a pile of books gnawed by the mice and consumed by the humidity of the place, and an ipod, which was out of tune with the antiquated air of the whole ambience.  
Intrigued, I had peeked at the titles of the books: Carter liked READING?  
"The picture of Dorian Gray. . . The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. . . Frankenstein. . . Dracula. . . " I spelled it out, puzzled.  
For some reason I couldn't imagine Carter reading Oscar Wilde.  
"Interview with the vampire. . . The Journal of Professor Abraham Van Helsing?"  
This was typical of Carter.  
"Why not?" He had joked, coming out of nowhere behind me and picking up the book with his white hands.  
"Right..." I looked at him skeptically, turning my back for the last time before I left.  
I couldn't really understand: I'd always had in mind a very clear image of Carter, unassuming and vain, yet. . . he lived in an isolated place like an hermit, slept in archaic stone coffins and read old (and new) Gothic novels. It could only be an impression, but the more I learned, the more I convinced myself not to know him at all, if not to have underestimated him.  
I should have been very careful that night.


	10. Confrontation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That night I would finally kill Carter, slice off his head and take it to my brother's grave, after burning the rest of his body to ashes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: violence, bloodsucking

I didn't think I'd ever seen a similar sunset: fire red, ochre and then violet, blue and orange...  
The evening air was biting my face. I shuddered, shrinking in the worn out coat I had used for years, and which had been further consumed in my long vampire hunt.   
Now, though, it was over.   
I had finally found Carter, the invisible shadow behind which I had run all those nights, learning to sleep during the day, confusing myself with them, opening the way to that point.   
Now, it was time to fight for me and Noel, and then I'd be free.   
I walked, avoiding the wild bushes, remembering and wondering how quickly those months had passed: from a simple human being, I had to turn into a vampire hunter to have my revenge.   
I had fallen so fast, living in the dark, hidden from the world and from others, that it almost seemed strange to me that everything was about to end.   
And yet, that was it: that night I would kill Carter, cut off his head and take it to my brother's grave, after having burned the rest of his body.   
My last effort. . .   
When I finally got to the crypt where the killer slept, the sun had now disappeared on the horizon, leaving behind large reddish streaks that coloured the sky like long streams of blood.   
"I didn't think you were such a romantic, Reiko!" sang Carter's voice behind my back.   
"And I didn't think you'd keep your word. We're even!" I mocked him when I turned to look at him.   
The Nightcreeper was planted between the two door frames of the tomb, with only a light cotton shirt on and an irritating sneer in the middle of his face.  
"You know we don't suffer the cold. " He'd giggled, sensing my uneasiness at seeing him so. . . naked.   
He had approached me, closing the heavy door behind him, and touching my cheek: it was as if he had been made of ice.   
He must have starved himself for days. . .   
"I refrained for the occasion," he explained, devouring me with his eyes. ". . . You should feel the warmth that emanates from your body. . . It's seductive. "   
"I'm not here to play, Carter. " I snorted, shoving that hand out of my face.   
"Oh, yeah, you're here to kill me. " he said carelessly, looking at his (obscenely long) fingernails.   
"That's right. So. . . " I pulled two stakes out of the flaps of my coat, one in each hand. That time I had come equipped, he could not play me like a child, catching me by surprise.   
"That's it?" He had raised his eyebrows, far from impressed.   
"Careful, Carter. . . " I growled threateningly, taking off my coat and preparing for attack.   
"It's almost night, Reiko. . . YOU're gonna have to be careful. " He had mocked me as his voice took on a strange tone.   
His eyes slowly tinged with a dark red, and his canines stretched as if they were elongated, until they popped out beyond his upper lip.   
The sun had set and with him the security of the day: Carter had regained his full powers.   
"Come on. . . " he challenged me, gazing at my neck with those ravenous pupils.   
Charging myself with anger and thirst for revenge, I threw myself at him with my right arm up, ready to strike.   
I had taken good aim and hit the target, but at that very moment the whole body of Carter, while I was about to pierce it, had dismembered like dust under my fingers: not even an instant later, hundreds of bats were hurling against my face, trying to scratch and hurt me.   
With a scream, I ended up on the ground.   
Damn him!  
"Get down and fight, you bastard!" I shouted at him from my lying position on the icy ground.   
A gloomy laugh resounded vibrantly in the air, as if it came from every corner of the cemetery.   
"Reiko, Reiko, so predictable. . . " it echoed in the darkness.   
"I thought you were smarter than that. " There was a sudden murmur behind my back.   
I turned around, quickly throwing an elbow in the middle of his stomach -if he still had one-, surprising him.   
"Enough games, Carter!" I had hissed him, watching him with satisfaction while he recovered with a grimace of pain.   
He had opened a small red slit from one of his tightened eyelids and growled:   
"All right!" jumping right onto my throat.   
Before he touched it with one of his fangs, I had stuck him in a quick grip, pushing the stake against his liver, only to then see him disappear again in a cloud of dust.   
"You fucking coward!" I had murmured, spitting excess saliva into a dried-up flower bed and looking nervously all around.   
"Where the hell are you?" I called him, taking a few steps forward, sharpening my eyes as much as I could.   
I had chosen the wrong place to fight him: the vision was below zero for my human sight, which had only the weak glow of the moon and a few stars to orient itself.   
I should have attracted him to the city: for how absurd it may have been, it would have been a much safer place, even though it would have exposed more innocent people to danger.   
I also had to admit that Carter was, in fact, a particularly hard bone to chew: although I had killed dozens of Nightcreepers, I had never faced one so powerful and able to master his powers as well as he . . . I would have taken longer than expected to eliminate him.  
Walking close to the boundary wall of the cemetery, with my ears wide open, the only sense that now I had left beyond touch to understand where I was going, I had resumed my hunt, with the only noise of the cicadas and of my laboured breath in the background.   
At one point, a crackling had attracted my attention, just above my head: I had just turned in that direction that two burning stones had plunged from nowhere on me.   
I had landed with a dull noise against a tombstone, breaking it in two, carrying the entire weight of Carter's dead body.  
"Look who has found himself with his ass back on the ground. . . " the latter had sneered at me, towering over me.   
It was a more than ghostly vision,inhuman to say the least: in the darkness of the night only his irises were visible, shining like lanterns on the dark background behind him, in a indefinable and frightening way.   
"Now, give me what I want. " He whispered, sticking his sharp nails into my arm's flesh.   
He was eager to go forward, guided by his powerful sense of smell. "Reiko. . . "   
I had clearly felt the icy fingers of his other hand caressing my throat: I had remained perfectly motionless, hoping that he would not be able to read my intentions.   
Just as he was reclining to bite me, I punched him on the nose with my fist, sending him flying against another tombstone, which this time had collapsed supine to the ground.   
Shivering with terror for the great risk I had just run (and the match had only just begun) I had lifted myself up from the ground, finding one of the stakes that, in the collision, had fallen in the tall grass.   
Taking advantage of the fact that the vampire was still lying half dazed on the grave, I quickly jumped on his back, immobilizing him, finally succeeding, even if only on one shoulder, to hit him.   
Carter had screamed in surprise and pain, then I had felt his body shaking with infinite anger.  
"Doesn't kill but it hurts, right, bastard?" I had taunted him, scrutinizing the ground to find the second spike and give him the coup de grace.   
The occasion was unique: with the wood stuck in that position, Carter had no chance to heal the wound and not even to be able to extract it from his body (even if on the latter hypothesis, knowing what kind of monster he was, I had my doubts), in this way he would have been unable to transform himself to escape me, weakened as he was by his hunger and the new injury.   
"Where the hell is it?" I had barked, constantly searching the ground and trying, at the same time, to keep the vampire pinned to the ground.   
I couldn't miss that opportunity, it absolutely shouldn't happen!   
"Damn it!" I had cursed, starting to lose my balance, but suddenly remembering that I had a third spike tucked in the deep back pocket of my pants.   
Reaching out hopefully and exulting in touching it almost instantaneously, I had pulled it out and turned the Nightcreeper face down to hit it.   
"Look at me, you son of a bitch" I spat on his face, grabbing him by the chin. "I'll be the last thing you see! THIS IS FOR NOEL!" I shouted, pushing with all the force I had in me the stake in Carter's chest.   
For a moment I had closed my eyes, expecting to be hit by a violent jet of blood, the only one left in the thirsty body of the undead, but more than bewildered to realize that it had never arrived at all.   
Surprised, I had reopened my eyelids, turning my pupils towards my right hand, which was still raised in mid-air, a few inches above Carter's heart. With the Nightcreeper's hand closed tight around my wrist.   
I'd stared dumbly at the scene, feeling like a fool, uncapable to believe it.  
"Not that I mind, Reiko, but my time has not yet come. " I heard his mocking voice in my ear.   
Red with rage, completely blinded by anger, with tears of disappointment trembling in my eyes, I had cried a superhuman scream, trying with both arms to push that damn peg into his chest.   
"Die! Die, you asshole!" I had repeated over and over again, pushing, unnecessarily.   
The strength of one of his hands was enough to counteract the entire will of my body.   
Carter had stood for a while in this position, then, as if I had been made of paper, he had rejected me, landing me on my backside.   
He had stood up, albeit a bit laboriously, with the piece of wood still protruding from his back, standing right in front of my feet.   
He had scrutinezed me with his eyes, no longer deep red, but a deep black that seemed to shine in the dark, and, for the first time, I had read something very similar to compassion in them.   
Only then did I realize I was crying. My cheeks were streaked with tears.   
"Go home, Reiko. " He whispered me, turning his back and leaving me like a broken ragdoll on the floor.   
"What. . . What the hell are you doing?" I screamed, incredulously: he was leaving!   
"I'm going to town. . . away. . . you know, I thought you'd be ready. But obviously, I was wrong. " He had shrugged his shoulders as far as he could, at that moment.   
"You're kidding! You can't just leave me! We have a challenge! We have. . . " I rambled, trying to attract his attention, but the Nightcreeper had continued on its way, touching his right shoulder, tinkering to get rid of the spike.   
"Carter! You're a damned bast. . . " I screamed at his behind, but I was stuck in the middle of the insult when I felt a familiar presence under my palm.   
A stake.  
Incapable of forming coherent thoughts, only with the animosity that was boiling in my veins, I had slowly raised my eyes from the log to Carter: he was distracted and still wounded, so it was probable that he could not yet read my thoughts. . .   
Silently, I had held the piece of wood between my fingers, crawling like a snake behind him.   
The vampire was struggling to eradicate the spike from his shoulder blade, where it seemed to have wedged quite well, totally unaware of my presence.   
When I had come a few steps away from him, he had raised his head, feeling like a slap in the face the strong smell of my blood.   
Alarmed, but also ravenous, he had turned in my direction, dropping the extracted stake like a dead weight in the dust.   
I had raised the pole above my head, ready to hit him, but just as I began to vibrate the blow that would finish him, Carter, in a primordial instinct of hunger mixed with survival, had grabbed my wrist and brought it as fast as lightning to his teeth, biting it.   
For a moment, time had stopped: me staring astonished at my wrist, and Carter falling into oblivion, pupils turning upside down in the orbits as he received the first gush of my blood.   
We'd stayed like that for what seemed like eternity, even though the whole scene probably didn't last more than two seconds.   
At a certain moment, I had heard Carter's canines retract from my vein, and everything had begun to flow again.   
Only then it hit me: he had just BITTEN me.   
Horrified, I had stared at the blood dripping in small streaks from the cuts, which stood out as two marks of death on my skin.   
Carter, on his side, after the primal euphoria, was also staring at the reddish dots on my wrist, with a vague air of fear on his face, but it had vanished in less than a moment, leaving room for his classic grotesque expression.  
Before I knew it, I had collapsed to my knees, feeling the earth rotating around me: I had just been infected by the saliva of an undead.   
I had raised my head, desperately looking for Carter, but he seemed to have suddenly vanished into thin air.   
In shock, I put my hands in my hair: in a few days, I would've become a vampire's slave.


	11. Infection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I knew how dangerous Carter was, and I had prepared myself morally to face him, yet, despite everything, I had somehow underestimated him, acting like a fool, attacking him from behind when I thought he was vulnerable, and now I was suffering the consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: murder solicitation, mentions of suicide

I was still in shock.   
After being violently bitten by Carter, the time had taken a rapid turn, flowing rapidly around me in an inconstant stain of colors.   
I couldn't even remember how I'd gotten back into town, into my own apartment.   
I was upset, my mind couldn't perceive anything else: the only thought I could formulate was "you're dead", and my eyes couldn't detach themselves from the horrible vision of my wounded wrist, which had swollen from the infection.   
It was too late now, I could see it: the blackish venom, the gangrene, was already starting to rise along my forearm, and soon it would reach my brain, erasing any connection between my neurons and enslaving me to Carter's will.   
In all likelihood, I would have really come to the end he wanted: I would have thrown myself at his feet and offered my own blood to him, giving it to him as a gift.   
I absolutely didn't expect that.   
I knew how dangerous Carter was, and I had prepared myself morally to face him, yet, despite everything, I had somehow underestimated him, acting like a fool, attacking him from behind when I thought he was vulnerable, and now I was suffering the consequences.   
"Idiot! Why did I do it?" I repeated myself for the hundredth time that night.   
I was in trouble, huge trouble, and not just because of the vampire bite.   
Now I was exposed, I was weak, not to mention that, within a few days, if I was lucky two weeks tops, my senses would be clouded, leaving me at the mercy of any Nightcreeper, even the least threatening.   
Anyone could have come to kill me, and Carter certainly would not have wasted time, revealing to everyone the "happy news", self-celebrating himself as the savior of the people of the Night.   
Damn him.  
I had sighed, feeling for the first time, after so long, really alone: it had been almost two days since that fateful night, I could feel the first effects of the disease, but I couldn't talk to anyone, ask for help. I couldn't even ask to be killed, since I would soon loose the light of reason.   
I was screwed.   
It was in those moments that I missed Noel: he and I always talked about everything. Thinking about it now, the memories of when we were locked in our room for hours, with the music at full volume talking about games, crushes and exams seemed far away, or as if it never existed.   
However, to kill time and avoid going out of my mind (at least before due), I had taken an old notebook and decided to use it as a diary, to write useful notes on vampires and my state.   
If you reread yesterday's notes, you could already see huge differences. The decay of my body was more than just beginning.   
To start with, there was my sleeping problem: the sunlight irritated me, even though it did not prevent me from going out yet, my eyes closed almost instinctively at dawn, even considering the fact that I was already used to shifting the hours of sleep with those of wakefulness.  
Also, there was the feeding.   
I wasn't at an advanced stage, but knowing people like Raglan, I knew I'd get there sooner or later. For the moment, I could still eat anything, but very soon blood would become the dominant element of my diet.   
Once that point was reached, only the blood of a vampire could keep me alive.  
That, or the complete transformation into one of them.   
I sighed and went to rest on the huge bed that took up most of the studio. I shouldn't have behaved like that, I knew it, isolation wasn't the solution, and I should have fought until I had the strength. . . however, I couldn't risk making things worse. If only one of them had noticed that I was hurt, they would have come in dozens to find me.   
I had lazily massaged my eyelids, taking a vague look at the window: outside it was still rather dark, but, judging from the torpor, within two hours at most the dawn would come.   
Without being able to avoid it, my eyes had fallen back to the two holes in my wrist, and then my mind had returned to focus on my other obsession: I remembered perfectly the expression of Carter when he had let me go, suddenly frightened, as if it was not his intention to bite me . . . it had lasted less than a quarter of a second, but it had remained printed in my memory, that unconscious fear . . .   
Hard to tell what he was truly thinking: Carter was almost impossible to understand, his mood was too volatile.   
Yet, there was something that was wearing me out, that I couldn't grasp. That vampire was a walking contradiction, and his strange silence. . . the mountain cemetery, the pile of worn books and his silent looks. . . disturbed me.   
There was something about Carter that was upsetting me, that went beyond the deep hatred I had towards him.   
"Stockholm syndrome!" It had come a long way to my ears, making me suddenly sway.   
I sat up, looking around me: nothing.   
My goodness, could I already have hallucinations?   
"Higher up. . . " the ghost voice had spoken again.   
Sweating cold, I had raised my pupils, shocked in noticing a silhouette lying on the canopy!   
"That's not true. . . " I denied, not knowing whether to burst out laughing or screaming out in distress.   
The figure had disappeared for a few moments, and then immediately reappeared on the mattress at my feet with a smug smile.   
It was Carter, and he had just crossed the curtain at the top of my bed!  
"O my God. . . " I whispered, paling visibly but trying not to show my surprise.   
"Oh, forgive me," the vampire smiled, amused. "It's not nice to spy on people in their bedroom. " He had disappeared for a fraction of a second, landing directly on my legs, paralyzing me where I was.   
"Fuck you, asshole!" I insulted him, flushing for the strange position.   
"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" The undead had chuckled, making me blush even more.   
And here was again that strange look: indecipherable, that didn't let you understand to what extent he was joking or being serious.   
"Stop it!" I shook myself, landing him on the other side of the bed and shifting to a safety distance.   
"Oh, come on, Reiko! And to think I was worried about you. " The Nightcreeper had snorted, sitting next to me with his legs crossed.   
"Yeah, well, maybe you should have thought of that BEFORE you bit me!" I had incinerated him by thinning my eyes, generally large.   
Carter had laughed again, shaking off the mass of black hair he had on his head: they were certainly not natural, since he must have died when they still had that vomitable can colour, but his real hair must not have been very far from the raven shade, considering the dark sparkle of his eyes.  
At that thought of mine, Carter had raised an eyebrow without answering.   
"Forget it," I had shrugged to go to the mirror.   
"You don't look so good. . . " commented in the background the vampire, checking me out. "How are you feeling?"   
I turned around, incredulous. A vague, worried expression had returned to his pupils.   
"What do you think?! It sucks. " I'd sneered, taking a look at myself and starting: I looked deader than him.   
"Listen, Reiko. " He argued, standing up too to get by my side. "This thing caught us both off guard. I really didn't mean to. . . "   
"What? To bite me? Please, spare me! You're drooling even now at the idea!" I frowned at him: I couldn't believe my ears!   
"Reiko, this is not a joke. You know what'll happen to you, and. . . "   
"YES, I KNOW! Thank you for reminding me. " I shouted at him, leaving him in awe, but not too much.   
I had sighed, taking my face in my hands: how much I hated him, first Noel, and now this. . . becoming the slave of my brother's killer. Shit!   
"Reiko, I. . . I came here to talk to you. In a few days, you won't be able to reason anymore. That's why I want you to listen to me carefully now. "  
He'd planted his black pools in mine, as serious as I'd never seen him before. He scared me.   
"I bit you. This ties us together, whether we want it or not: you will soon notice what I mean; you will hear and see things you don't want to hear. . . you will lose control. . . you will be able to feel my presence, your blood will respond when I'm close to you". He had stopped for a second, with a dark red flash in the dark irises.   
He was already looking forward, against his will, to the moment. His animal nature prevailed without effort, and in the meantime I wondered how much effort it would take even just being close to me without jumping at my throat.   
"It's not easy. And I'm not sure I'll be able to control myself when the time comes. " He said truthfully, playing around with the piercing on his lower lip. "That's why I ask you one thing, now that you can answer me clearly, do you want me to kill you?"   
That question, so hard and straightforward, had upset my soul.   
"I. . . " had stammered, uncertain.   
One thing I was sure of: I would never become a slave. But die? Was I ready? I was only 23. . .   
"There's another possibility, you know. . . " Carter reminded me, with his arms folded.   
There was. I could have become a vampire.   
I had made a bitter smile, knowing already, inside me, that I actually had no chance. I had to die.   
My thoughts were passed on silently to Carter, who suddenly seemed to be standing on his toes.   
I laughed in his face, cruelly.   
"What did you think?" I had mocked him, feeling so bad anyway that I wanted to strangle him where he was. "That I would go against my ideals and take blood from my brother's killer? So we would all live happily ever after and put a beautiful stone (my own) on the whole story?! I don't really know what you're thinking, Carter, I don't have your power but I don't even care! It's over, I'm done, I could have killed you and achieved my goal, but unfortunately I made a mistake, and I lost myself. It was a risk, I knew it could happen, even if I didn't think it would be you. . . ironic, eh?!"   
I was falling apart, I could feel it, yet I didn't want him to see me like that. I hated it.   
"Reiko, you're upset. I understand you hate our race, but try to reason. It's a great power, and you could have it! You could be reborn. . . "   
"No, Carter, I can't. I'm already dead. I died when you bit me. So when the time comes, come back and finish what you started. " I'd pulled up with my nose, giving him my back quickly, avoiding looking at him.   
The truth was that I also hated myself: Carter was a vampire, he didn't look anyone in the face, it was easy to blame him, but I also had to blame myself. I would not have died with dignity; dying with dignity would have meant having the courage to take my own life, not throwing the duty on someone else, being responsible for my own actions. . . and yet, I wasn't. I was a coward, I didn't have the courage to do it.  
"Is that really what you want?" I heard his voice coming cold as ice behind me, completely without emotion.   
"Yes. I want you to kill me. "I nodded, staring at the floor.   
"And your body?"   
"I don't know. . . we have a cemetery lot but. . . "   
"Yeah, I know where it is. I've been there a couple times. " He had shut me up, taking a strange, remote look.   
"Oh. " I had exhaled, stunned, still giving up understanding his absurd personality. It didn't matter much anymore.   
"Good. You want me to disappear, now, don't you?" He asked me, even though he knew the answer very well.   
"Yes. I want you to leave. " I looked back at him with animosity.   
"All right. " He had made a vague nod with his head, heading for the window. "I'll come when you'll call. " He said by way of greeting, disappearing into a fluttering whirlwind of bats in the night, leaving me once again alone with my thoughts.


	12. Madness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The last meeting with Carter had devastated me beyond imagination: it was not so much the fact that I had practically sold him my soul, but the sudden and terrible realization that I would soon die, and I could do nothing to prevent it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: a bit of slash XD

As another new dawn slowly rose from the hills and I struggled against my eyelids trying to close, numerous images flowed through my mind.   
The last meeting with Carter had devastated me beyond imagination: it was not so much the fact that I had practically sold him my soul, but the sudden and terrible realization that I would die soon, and I could do nothing to prevent it.   
It sounded so crazy! I was like a terminal patient who until the day before completely ignored that his illness, with a purpose, goals and ideals, while now. . . everything seemed vain.   
Maybe it was really like that: I had ended up throwing myself into a situation I couldn't control and had become part of a giant gear, which I, the tiny wheel, had not been able to block.   
In fact, hadn't I died, I would have ended up taking part in it.   
Reflecting on all these things, I watched the rays of sun make their way through the curtains to reach the feet of my bed.   
The time had come, within a short time I would have fallen asleep, but not the way humans meant.   
I'd probably never rest like I did before: as far as I could tell, vampires didn't dream. They fell into a long oblivion, a comatose torpor of death, even though they could still perceive dangers from the outside, like a big, ravenous cat that rested with one eye open.   
Some even slept with their eyelids wide open, and were the most unnatural and obscene vision one could ever imagine.   
Now, the oblivion was coming to claim me, wiping out every possible thought from my brain.  
\-------------------------------------------------  
Two more days had passed, slow and inexorable, in an exhausting alternation of sleep and wakefulness.   
I couldn't tell which were the worst, but Carter's predictions were coming true: I could hear EVERY SINGLE thing.   
At first it was just the rustle of insects that snaked in the dark corners of the house, then people walking in the streets.   
Even my eyesight, before rather poor (in fact I had always worn contacts), had improved: I could do without it lenses, focusing on the smallest details of the television against the wall opposite my bed.   
And yet, despite everything, I couldn't read people's thoughts.   
Of course, not all Nightcreepers were "reborn" with such abilities: most of them, except for the typical supernatural characteristics of crawling up the walls or the sight, strength and hearing, had none.   
However, there was something else.   
I didn't know if this was common to each one of them, but, sometimes, and recently more and more often, I perceived. . . THINGS, fleeting sensations, almost impalpable, like a sudden sadness or an unstoppable need to laugh.   
Joy, pain, affection, resentment silently creeped in my mind, but they did not belong to me: they were the feelings of someone else.   
And then there was CARTER.   
It never happened during the day, since we both slept, but most of the time, at night. . . I could feel it. I knew that he was there, perched outside the window of my room, digging into my thoughts, despite what I told him.   
It seemed that my presumed empathy was even amplified towards him: when he came, his presence became tangible, and, while not saying a single word, believing that I did not notice him (and probably would have been so for any other human being), I felt his concern for me quite clearly.   
All this had to be a consequence of the bond that we now shared.  
My blood boiled when he was close, running more violently in my body, pumped quickly from the heart in a frenetic rhythm that almost made it flow in reverse.   
My skin seemed to catch fire, every single pore opened and my limbs became swollen, and more than once I had happened to wake up from hypnotic torpor with a solid erection between my legs.   
It was madness: my cells cried out in chorus the name of Carter, my mind was a confused and disconnected whirlwind of broken sentences and thoughts, while the infection, now more than consolidated, had risen in necrotic strips along my arm, reaching up to the neck, marking forever my skin.   
I couldn't even look in the mirror anymore, I was afraid of what I could see: I was turning.   
Even tonight, I could tell he was near: the sensation awakened in my chest, making me anxious, sweat dripping down my back. It drove me crazy, cold chills crawling through my limbs, making my nipples harden with pleasure.   
It was terribly erotic, perverse: it gave me the violent impulse to touch myself, to quench my thirst.   
He had showed up at my window, calling for me, asking me to join him, and so I did, moving on all fours on the parquet, unable to resist, leaning with all my weight on the glass, frozen because of the cold in the night wind, wishing eagerly it was his arms.   
Carter didn't speak, just stood on the other side and stared at me, craving the forbidden contact as much as I did.   
He never once tried to get in, but always returned and stayed, convulsely panting against the cold plate, caressing it languidly, as if they were the most attractive forms he had ever seen.   
"Reiko. . . " he sometimes murmured, with a red sparkle in his eyes.   
Even though it was dark, I could see his teeth, long and sharp, and I shivered at the thought of having them stuck in my tender flesh.   
Slowly, my hands moved to the collar of my shirt, shaking with impatience, undoing the first buttons then opening the flaps to expose my pale neck to his sight.   
Carter's eyes then shivered, his scarlet irises hiding behind the dilation of his pupils, lips moistening, almost unconsciously, from expectation.   
His fingers snapped closed, long nails scratching the surface, yet his instinct still never overwhelmed him, and he never asked me to let him in.   
Then, just as it started, it finished.   
Carter disappeared silently into the darkness, and I remained desperate at the doorframe, yearning for his touch and at the same time ashamed of what I had just done.   
I had no control at all, and every day was getting worse and worse: soon I would have taken the initiative with the vampire myself, asking him to take me, humiliating and whoring out my pride.   
The remnants of unconsumed pleasure crowded into my mind, fading slowly, one after the other, until I was left alone with the memories of my behavior and the infamy that followed, until, finally, the tormented sleep downed upon me.


	13. Decadence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was really the end, soon blood would be the only element of my diet, and I would be ready for any action, to gain a drop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: bloodsucking, slash

More days had followed, how many I couldn't tell, maybe a week, since Carter bit me.   
My mental stability thinned by the second, making me unable to formulate any coherent thought, while terror and empathy grew along one another.   
Voices, sounds and memories crossed the walls, making me crazy, so strong they were simply impossible to ignore.   
The notebook that I had decided to use as a diary lay open on the floor, torn, with the last pages filled with incomprehensible scribbles.   
The gangrene had reached a level of unprecedented extension, I could now see it clearly in the mirror in front of me: the purple necrotic stripes covered more than half of my face, like a spider web, pulsing as if they had been alive, even if this was actually due to the virus contained in the saliva of the vampire.   
It was a pathological absurdity, almost like having a reverse fever: my temperature dropped day by day, from my normal 36. 5° C, it had fallen to 34. 1°C.   
Hadn't I starved to death, I'm sure that would have been enough to kill me.   
When, in fact, with extreme effort, I managed to drag myself out of bed, it was only to reach the bathroom or the fridge.   
Food, however, given the degradation of my organism, had become disgusting, untouchable: I was unable to metabolize solid foods, while iced drinks pierced my esophagus like razor blades.   
It was really the end, soon blood would be the only element of my diet, and I would be ready to do anything to gain a drop.  
The event of the night before was a solid proof: when Carter had come to lurk on the balcony, in my erotic fury I had beaten against the glass with such fervour and so many times, that I had reduced it to tiny fragments, but once I had finally achieved to remove the barrier between me and the Nightcreeper and I had crawled on my elbows up to the terrace, there was no trace left of him, and I'd found myself raving like a fool with torn hands under a sparse winter rain.   
Even now, my fingers were showing signs of the struggle, as the window lay in its corner without the glass, letting the cold evening air pass through.   
That night would have been different, it would have been much easier for the vampire to reach me, not to mention that even the simplest novice would have represented a threat to me, being able to crawl all over the walls.   
Slowly, I moved towards the mirror, staring at my phalanges with a certain fear: I was not able to bend them, the pain killed me, they were almost shattered, studded with crusts and scars.   
I took just a few steps when a huge cramp caught me in the stomach.   
"Aaagh!" I cried, bending in two like a sock puppet, falling flat on the ground.   
Unfortunately it wasn't the first time it happened, my body was changing, changing to the smallest, most invisible cell.   
"Shit" I panted, rolling over my chest and leaning my right cheek on the floor.   
Other abrupt contractions had followed, making me twist in the dust: it was the hunger, or rather, the THIRST, the need for blood inside me was building up.   
As I tried in vain to ignore the spasms and the violent desire for the red liquid, a low and sudden noise had attracted my attention: it was like a faint but sharp scratching, followed by small thumps, which struck the ground with insistence, reaching my ear, pressed to the ground.  
Intrigued, I had moved my head, raising my gaze and crossing those of two small, visible eyes.   
A rat.   
A big black sewer rat.   
"Good God!" I had been able to pronounce, not without a certain discomfort: I had no idea where that beast might have come out from.   
The rat had moved away from me, completely ignoring me, silently smelling the air and skirting along the wall, probably looking for food crumbs.   
"Great" I had murmured, thinking about what to do, finding it impossible to stop staring at it.   
It was medium in size, filthy and with an ugly fur, yet it seemed chubby and well fed.   
Well fleshed out and tasty.   
"What the hell are you talking about?" I had laughed out loud like a madman, but I stopped instantly when the mouse's SCENT had hit my nostrils in full force.   
BLOOD.   
FOOD.   
The black veins of the gangrene had begun to pulsate more strongly, beating insistently on my skin, and, right under my pupils, the blood vessels of the animal had manifested themselves clearly to my sight, coming out in transparence from under the fur, showing me all their path, and the precious liquid they were carrying.   
I could feel his tiny heart beating, unaware, pumping into a circle that red substance with a wonderfully acrid and pungent aroma.   
It was there, calling me.   
Even before I realized it, I had snaked behind it, quieter than a cat, with the sound of his blood in my ears.   
When I had reached it, it had raised his ears alarmed and instantly caught the danger, but it was too late: I had grabbed it by the back, ravenously sinking my teeth into its belly, making it squeal out in fear.   
It had desperately tried to defend itself, struggling with its paws, unnecessarily. In a few sips I had completely bled it out, vaguely twisting my lips for the bitter and metallic taste it had.  
Once finished, although not completely satisfied, I had thrown the corpse to the ground, feeling, after several days, finally fed in a decent way.   
Only then did the thought strike me: I had just eaten a rat!   
"Jesus Christ!" I screamed, pressing my hands against my mouth, and whining about the sudden violent pain.   
All the scars on the palms had reopened as a result of the hunting, and were bleeding profusely.   
"No!" I threw myself into the big chest of drawers next to the TV, in front of my bed, just under the mirror, looking for something to bluntly stop my wounds.   
I had glimpsed a vague red glow in the reflection, and I automatically raised my head to find out what it was.   
My legs had given way to the horror: my irises were reflected on the shiny surface, no longer the usual pitch black colour, but a dark, gloomy, red.  
I had finally gotten there.   
"No! Fuck, no!" I shouted, bursting into broken tears, bellowing even louder when I saw that the tears that fell on my cheeks were of blood as well.   
It was the end. I was a monster!   
"CARTER!" I screamed, in repulsion. I wanted to die, I wanted to end it, end it now. I could not bear to see myself in that state, something between a vampire, creature of the night, and what was once a human being.   
I didn't want to look anymore. I didn't want to hear it anymore.   
"Carteeer!" I was wiggling, throwing myself across the window and crawling all the way to the terrace. "Where are you? CARTEEER!" I called in the night.   
But no whirlwind of wings was to be heard.   
No death messenger had arrived.


	14. Oblivion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I waited for hours, in vane. Carter never came.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: violence, mentions of suicide

I waited for hours in vain. Carter never came.   
I called over and over again, in the dark, waiting to see a shadow appear at my window, but it served no purpose.   
Carter had disappeared, and he would certainly not arrive now that there were only a few hours till the rise of dawn.   
I was really doomed, in the end he had really left me at my mercy. I probably would have died of hunger, and they would have found me in an advanced state of decomposition many months later in my apartment . . . or I would have completely lost my mind and ended up turning into a doppelganger of Raglan looking for filthy rats in the trash cans (I was already well on my way to that ending).   
If I hadn't found the strength to kill me. . .   
Taken by despair, I curled up in a corner, against the outer wall of the French window, hiding my face in my arms, my hands still pulsing, macilent.   
What was I supposed to do? Should I have jumped off the terrace? In fact, now that I was probably completely alone, I could start to seriously consider the possibility of doing it.   
Carter had betrayed me, not only had the bastard made a sumptuous banquet of my blood, infecting me with his kiss of death, but he had also refused to honor his word, leaving me to die alone in that hole.   
I suddenly stopped, realizing how pathetic I sounded. Carter was a VAMPIRE, an enemy, whom didn't look anyone in the face, and I was only a nuisance, a human being just like any other.  
Why would I be worth more than food to him?   
Throwing curses in the air, more against myself and my weakness, than against the Nightcreeper, I had, with great effort, lifted myself up, turning my back to the balcony to return to lie down on the bed.   
It was daytime now, I needed to rest.  
At that very moment, a strong wind had passed through the room, making me shake all over.   
I turned around quickly, with a vague glimmer of hope: it was him, Carter!  
He had taken an uncertain step inside the room, looking at me with suspicion.   
The erotic hysteria hit me hard, in full throttle.   
"Stay there"; I had panted, taking a step back, feeling vaguely better, becoming one with the wall opposite him.   
"Do you think that's enough?" The vampire smiled at me, piercing my face with his black ditches.   
My hysteria had suddenly grown, setting me off like a car engine.   
I groaned, reclining backwards and hitting my head right into the stone behind me.   
"You've changed." Carter observed, passing an inspective glance on my destroyed hands and the black necrosis running across my face.   
"Carter. . ." I had stuttered, but the other one had taken three steps in my direction, sending blood pumping in gushes into my veins.   
My heartbeat accelerated, as if out of its own will, and a vague heat began to spread between my limbs, right into my pants.   
"Last night you seemed rather eager to get something. . ." he had considered, vaguely discovering his shiny teeth. "And now... now you want me to KILL you?" He exhaled, and he wouldn't stop looking at me for a second.   
"Yes" I replied, trying to become even more part of the wall as the Nightcreeper approached.   
I was sweating cold. "You made me. . . you made me a promise."  
"That's true." He nodded, pensive, his mouth wrinkled. "Despite what you think, I am an honorable man, Reiko. I always keep my word. But you. . ." he interrupted himself, stretching one of his slender fingers towards my neck, planting those dark wells in mine. ". . . Are you sure about what you're asking me? Did you consider your.... options right?" He rubbed a long nail along my trachea, almost making me have an orgasm.   
"Ah. . . Carter. . ." I stammered.   
My body was all a quiver, I could clearly feel my lips shaking.   
"Don't you want some satisfaction, at last?" He had whispered in my ear, causing me to pant even louder, sniffing at the hollow of my neck.   
"No, I. . . " I was in a total state of confusion, I couldn't feel or see anything anymore, only his body and the frost that it emanated.   
I raised my arms and, against all expectations, I squeezed him against me, cataleptic, but the feeling of sudden pain in my palms partially brought me back to reality.  
I was doing it again, I was giving in to my senses and offering my neck to Carter!   
Damn it!   
"No, let go of me!" I tried to push him away with my elbows, but his arms had closed like an iron grip around my hips.   
"Carter!" I growled threateningly, the euphoria of ecstasy completely vanished.   
"You don't really want to die." The vampire said, reading my pupils.   
"Yes, I do! KILL ME! Kill me now!" I started screaming, giving violent bumps to get rid of him.   
"Liar! Not even two seconds ago you were almost begging me to bite you!" He had mocked me, locking me by the shoulders.   
"Because I wasn't myself!" I cried. "You don't understand, I'm not me anymore! I am a. . . a. . ."  
"Reiko, just consider the possibility! You could have a great power! You could live forever!"  
In hearing his words, I kicked even harder, and then I suddenly stopped. It wouldn't have helped anyway.   
"Let me go, monster." I hissed at him. "If you don't kill me, then I'll do it myself. I'll never become a freak of nature like YOU!"  
Carter was strangely muted by my resentment, his concentration lost for a few moments, so much that he lost his grip.   
We stared at each other for a few seconds, while I tried to mantain a challenging look.   
I tried to get over him and give him my back, but, at the very last moment, Carter had reacted to my provocation, grabbing me by the neck, cutting off my breath.   
Caught off guard, I grasped on his hands, falling to my knees.   
"You want to die? DIE THEN!" The vampire roared, burning me with two rabid reddish irises.   
He had continued to strangle me, toppling me backwards, lying me down on my back and sitting on top of my waist.   
"C. . . Cart. . . " I had exhaled, clinging convulsely to his contracted hands, feeling myself slipping away.  
My head was tingling, and the air couldn't reach my lungs, leaving me in apnea.   
"What is it? Are you scared?" He'd sneered, sticking his thumbs into my neck.   
I was completely without oxygen, it seemed like my face was about to explode and I could barely feel my fingers and toes.   
I was dying, I was really dying, my eyes were starting to blur, and all I could think of was that yes, I was afraid, and I didn't want to die, I didn't want him to kill me.   
I wanted to live.   
With one last effort, I had tried to exhale a breath to stop it, but the hands of the Nightcreeper had remained like blocks of stone in place, continuing to tighten, stronger and stronger, taking away the life I had left in my body.   
"I don't want to die! I don't want to. . . " my brain repeated in a mantra.   
The last thing I had seen, above my head, was the ceiling, then the darkness had come slowly, while, silently, I fell lifelessly into the oblivion of death.


	15. Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When I opened my eyes again, it had taken me several moments to understand where I was: I was lying on my bed and, against all my possible expectations, I was not dead at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: mention of suicide intentions and gore

When I opened my eyes again, it had taken me several moments to understand where I was: I was lying on my bed and, against all my possible expectations, I was not dead at all.  
Surprised and upset, I sat up suddenly, bringing my right hand to my neck, wheezing.  
Whirlwinds of thoughts crowded my mind: what had just happened? Why wasn't I dead? Why didn't Carter finish me off? Did he read my last thought? Or simply abandoned me? Had he. . .  
"Too much confusion."Carter said, as he walked into the room, shutting me up with a mere wave of his hand.  
"Carter!" I exclaimed, almost surprised more by the fact of seeing him there, than of being still alive.  
The vampire made a vague grimace with his mouth, approaching me, but maintaining a certain distance so as not to be assailed by erotic hysteria in an excessive way.  
"Listen Reiko" he said, carefully selecting the words, "We must speak. Seriously."  
" You want to TALK?!" I cried, incredulous. "Look, I. . ."  
"No. I mean it;Reiko, there's not much time left and I want to. . ."  
"Why didn't you kill me?" I asked him dryly, looking at him stone cold.  
I was actually relieved that he hadn't. I had never been so afraid in my life, and even though that was my only real way out, it didn't attract me at all.  
"You don't want to die." He answered, without quitting for a second staring at me.  
I had been frankly disconcerted by how sure he'd sounded, not knowing what to reply with. Maybe I could lie to him, but I certainly couldn't lie to myself.  
"Anyway" he resumed, breaking the silence that had fallen on the room. "This is your problem. What I want now is for you to hear me out before you make a decision."  
Before I could contain myself, I had burst into a derisory laughter.  
"DECISION? What decision? You know very well that I haven't any!"  
"Shut up! Not another word. Shut up and listen, because what I'm about to tell you will change everything" He struck me with a creepy look. For once, the classic mocking smile that accompanied his every little expression was missing on his face.  
"What. . . ?" I exhaled, confused.  
His serious countenance made me anxious.  
"Why do you hate our Race so much? Why did you turn into the Vigilante?" He asked me.  
I looked at him, not believing what I had just heard.  
"Like you don't know!" I exclaimed, irate, but his icy gaze held me back from hitting him.  
I rolled my eyes before continuing: "Because you're a bunch of beast. . ."  
Carter had filled the space between us and suprised me with a resounding slap on the face.  
"What the hell are you doing?! Are you crazy?";I shouted, my hand pressed on my aching cheek.  
"It's not a game, Reiko" the nightcreeper growled, grinding his teeth, freezing the blood in my veins.  
He went back on his footsteps, keeping a safe distance.  
"Because I HATE you" I admitted, shaking with rage. "Because you KILLED my brother! Because I wanted revenge on you all, especially on YOU!"  
Suddenly, I felt wet on my face: there tears of anger and sorrow running down my cheeks.  
"I wanted to find you, I wanted to find out who you were, to get you and make you suffer a half, an inch of the pain he had to endure!" I had confessed in a single breath, hiding my face in my hands, crying even louder for the searing pain the scars caused me.  
"I wanted to... I HAD to find my brother's killer and serve him justice. The truth is. . . the truth is, since Noel died, I haven't thought about anything else. . ."  
And it was true. His death had destroyed my life and family, and the things that previously seemed to have importance and meaning to me, were now empty and worthless. I was worthless, so taken up in my death wish and the terror of committing the act.  
I sobbed, unable to stop, showering my face with red fluids.  
Carter was right, my time was up, and I had to make my choice.  
I wasn't human anymore, but I wasn't even a vampire. I was caught in the middle.  
"You need to do justice for your brother. . ." Carter commented. His wasn't a question but a statement. ". . . You have lost someone you loved very much, and now, all you can do, is to pursue in your vengeance, night after night. . . " he stared at me in the face with an hard gaze. "Reiko, you've lost your life, as well as Noel's, that night. You've lost your desires, your dreams, your expectations. You spent so much of your time looking for me, you risked everything you had. You put your safety at stake, and all because I killed your brother. . ."  
There was another second of silence, full of tension.  
It's true," I finally nodded. "It's true, and my only regret is not having been able to kill you. But, even though I still have to accept the idea of being about to die. . . I'm happy. Because, even if I didn't manage to do it completely, I was able to see your face, to see WHO had caused that damage to my family. I'm just sorry I acted like a fool, and I didn't off you when I could have. " I confirmed, trying to cleanse my cheeks from tears, but only ending up spreading them evenly on my face.  
Carter inhaled deeply, even though he didn't really need to, and before he spoke, I saw his lips tremble.  
"What if. . ." he stopped, undecided whether or not to conitnue.  
"Carter?" I asked, astonished. I didn't understand that strange expression, and I'd never seen him do it before. It was like he was showing me an hidden side of himself.  
"What if I told you now that I'm not Noel's killer?"  
"WHAT?" I screamed, after a moment of pure shock where I had only managed to blink.  
"That's right, Reiko." The vampire continued, without taking his deep gaze away from mine. "I know, it sounds crazy but. . ."  
"Get out." I cut him off, without letting him finish.  
"Reiko. . ."  
"I said get OUT!" I stood up quickly, staggering in my haste, the blood rushing quickly from my head.  
I had reached the bedside table, taken the first object that I had found there - an abatjour- and had thrown it towards Carter, missing him by a good inch. The Nightcreeper raised an eyebrow in the direction of the crash, without even trying to move.  
"Reiko." He repeated, with the tone of an adult who is losing patience with a child.  
"You lying bastard!" I had ignored him, brandishing one of the stakes I kept next to me when I slept and throwing myself at him.  
Not even halfway through I was struck by a convulsive attack of erotic hysteria, which hit me like a violent blow, causing me to lose the stability and balance.  
However, I dragged myself to his feet, beating the air, weakening myself at every foot I took away from our distance.  
In the end, when I reached my goal by crawling on my knees, Carter blocked my arms effortlessly, disarming me in seconds. I was, once again, at his mercy.  
"Let me explain. . . " he whispered to me, shivering as well because of our extreme closeness.  
"Why? It's just gonna be a bunch of lies!" I had mocked him, with contempt.  
"We'll see when I'm done." He replied, giving me a quick push and letting me fall back on my rear. "Now listen to me" he started, taking a remote look. "The night Noel was killed. . . it was a stormy day, remember?"  
I did. The highest amount of lightning strikes in history had showered our city, devastating trees, roofs and houses.  
The animals were out of their mind, you couldn't find one around anymore. The ducks in the pond behind our house had all reacted at the same time, flapping their wings and swimming in a circle, lost in terror.  
"It had rained heavily for a whole day. the rivers were in danger of overflowing." He remembered. "it was thundering so loud I could hear the crackled from my coffin. The walls were rocking from the vibrations." He took a break, where I unintentionally nodded.  
I wanted to see where this was going.  
"That night, when I came out of the crypt, there was a light rain still falling. The sidewalks were dotted with puddles, as were the roofs. I had planned to follow my last prey, one that I had been following for months now, but I had not taken into account the weather factor." He offered a strange smile, which I wasn't able to interpret.  
"In fact, as it was raining, he had decided to stay inside. So, bored, I perched on the windowsill of his bedroom, peering out of the curtains at what he was doing.  
I instinctively repressed a chill at the thought that, before Noel was killed, I had been completely unaware of the existence of the world of vampires and that one of them could've lurked every night at my window like a voyeur.  
"So far, nothing unusual. But then, suddenly, something went wrong." He closed his eyes, focusing on his memory.  
"Did Noel discover you?" I asked him. It had to be.  
Carter looked at me enigmatically, with a bizarre expression on his face.  
"No." He smiled. "It's more complicated than that. I was watching, when his parents walked into the room. There was an argument, and he came out. I read their thoughts and understood, so I launched straight on rooftops. I got to the alley, but it was already too late. Noel was dead, murdered." He concluded by looking me in the eyes.  
"Wait!" I stopped him. "Wait a minute! This is bullshit! Noel never had an argument with our parents the night of his murder! He went out to the pub with his friends! He was attacked while coming home, what the hell are you saying. . .?"  
"You're stupider than I thought,";Carter told me, shaking his head with sympathy.  
"EXCUSE ME?" I exclaimed, in anger and confusion.  
"My last prey was not NOEL, Reiko." The nightcreeper revealed, as cryptical as a sphinx.  
"What? No, bullshit! It was YOU, YOU, I saw you quite well, with my own eyes!"; I denied, furious.  
I didn't know what game he was playing, but he was making me nervous. I didn't want him to mock my brother's death.  
"It is. I wasn't the one hunting Noel, I was hunting someone else."  
"Yeah, right."  
"It's the truth!" He grabbed me by the shoulders and caused the blood to pump strongly in my veins. "If I'd really taken Noel's head off his neck, why wouldn't I have done that to you, too? And I could already have, had I wanted to." He hissed, with a threatening air.  
"I don't know, you tell me." I replied in a challenging tone, with my arms folded.  
I was playing with fire, but by then I had nothing to lose.  
Carter let me go, taking a deep breath to control himself. He was losing his patience, it was obvious.  
"So, according to your little story, when you were stalking your future victim, you ran into Noel's body?"; I recapitulated, believing him less and less.  
"Yeah." The undead aswered, not at all amused by my malicious tone.  
"Ah, how convenient. So tell me, who was this victim of yours?"; I asked sly, "Did he know Noel? Did I know him?";  
Carter had produced a rather disturbing sneer.  
"Oh, of course. " He nodded, looking like a cat that had just caught a mouse.  
"What do you mean?" I wondered, losing the urge to laugh in his face.  
"It was YOU, Reiko." He announced, spreading the sneer into a cheeky smile.  
Suddenly I felt my heart plunge.  
"Liar!" I shot back at him.  
Christ, it couldn't have been true, even if. . . after all, hadn't he already managed to follow me in the last few months? So why wouldn't it be possible when I was still in the dark about the world of Nightcreepers, and consequently much more vulnerable?  
Goddamn it. The doubts devuoured me.  
"Your confidence is starting to falter, doesn't it? Why don't you use your new ability to find out if I'm telling the truth?"; The vampire offered, crossing his arms.  
That'was it then: my empathy had not happended randomly, nor was it the pit of the madness into which I was falling.  
Although I didn't know for sure how to use it, I tried to look inside Carter: many emotions fluttering in him, desire, hunger, anger, and, incredibly, even a certain amount of agitation, that I was not able to explain. Nothing, though, to suggest that he was lying to me. So was it all true? After all, that night, in the alleyway, I had only seen him run away, and NOT committ the act. . .  
"Let's say I believe you" I came to his aid, but without overreacting. "Then who wanted to kill Noel? Why is that?";  
"I can't tell you that." He had shaken his head negatively. "But I can tell you what I saw." He reprsed.  
" What you... saw?" I repeated, without understanding.  
"Yes, listen, the night of the storm I was lurking on the windowsill of your room. You were studying one of your art books for your exam on painters from the 19th century. Van Gogh, if I'm not mistaken."  
Oh, yes. Wheatfield with crows, I had almost forgotten. That painting had always inspired me with an intrinsic terror, from the very moment I'd looked at it, it was dark, insane, distressing.  
And Carter knew that. He had really spied on me.  
"Your parents came into the room and discussed Noel's strange delay. You tried calling him, but his cell phone wasn't answering. So you ran out of the house and threw yourself into the streets, going backwards from home to the pub. I was there too, but I cut across the roofs, using my sense of smell, and managing to get ahead of you. But when I finally caught on Noel's scent and went down the alley, it was too late. I saw him, Reiko, saw him cut his head off his neck, but I couldn't stop him." He had revealed with his eyes closed.  
"And who was he? Did you see his face?" I asked him, feeling like I was about to lose my mind.  
All those months of hunting. . . to think I had always believed that it had been Carter. . .  
"No. Unfortunately. He must have surely felt my presence, and fled across the walls. I only saw his red eyes disappearing in the dark and a whirlwind of what could have been a coat. . . then you came and. . . you saw me. So I escaped, too."  
"But, Carter, you can read thoughts! You could have. . . "  
"Only that of humans. It doesn't work on vampires, I can only feel their presence, nothing more. I'm sorry." He then added, noticing my devastated countenance.  
"But I. . . I saw you. . . laugh. . . " I commented, after a moment of pause.  
Carter had sneered, a sound very similar to the one of that night.  
"You must have misrepresented what you saw." He said with little cheerfulness. ". . . I WAS sneering, but it wasn't because I was having fun: I followed you. You found me. That shouldn't happen at all, it could upset the laws of nature. The disaster was complete." He'd made a sad smile, shrugging his shoulders.  
It was clear: in his case, he felt that he had failed. He had violated one of the primary laws of the undead, and he was doing so even now, just coming to talk to me.  
There should be no contact between vampires and humans, humans were just food, you could not just converse with them. As absurd as they may have sounded, as the law may have been, they were nevertheless true and necessary. I had seen, I had come to know of a forbidden world, and I had paid for it to all intents and purposes, with my own life.  
"Anyway, that's not the point." Carter raised one hand to draw my attention.  
"No?! Then what is it?" I asked, laughing at myself. All that time wasted. . . and now, it was too late.  
Carter stared right into my soul, with his chilling bottomless wells.  
"Now that you know I'm not Noel's real killer. . . that you've returned to your starting position. . . are you still convinced you have to die?"  
I looked at him, incredulous.  
"What do you mean?" I asked him, not understanding what he meant, even though I had a terrible suspicion.  
"Think about it;You still have a chance." He alluded, raising both eyebrows.  
I caught the meaning right away, bursting into irate screaming.  
"Ha! Of course it is! I could always be a vampire, couldn't I? Then I could offer you my blood and you'd be so happy to take it!" I roared, not believing what he was (again!) proposing to me.  
!Don't be stupid, it's the only way you have to not die. And if you don't, you can keep investigating, as a vampire, you'd be much stronger. . . "  
"Ah, what a selfless offer!" I snorted, throwing a piece of furniture to the ground. ";. . . Why didn't you tell me this EARLIER?" I pierced him, holding his gaze.  
"I..."  
"Oh, yeah, right! Why would you do that? I caught you, this was against your rules, so you had to choose someone else to follow and kill. But it didn't fit you, did it? You had to have me at all costs and the only way was to make me believe what I wanted!"  
Carter remained silent, confirming my theories.  
"Because if I believed that you were the one who killed my brother, I would have looked everywhere for you. And when I attacked you, you would have had every right to defend yourself." I touched my wounded wrist, feeling new tears of anger forming behind my eyelids.  
He used me, and I fell for it. God, I hated him so much!  
"You're a fucking bastard! You're no better than the one who behaded my brother!" I spat at him, shaking furiously from head to toe. "Get out of here!" I turned around, refusing to continue that conversation.  
Carter stood still for two seconds, panting, trying to keep his self-control.  
"Whatever, do as you wish!" He screamed in the end, turning upside down the entire chest of drawers in front of the bed, crashing the mirror in a thousand shatters, making me jerk back in fear.  
He headed for the French door, stopping halfway to point a long finger with a sharp nail at me.  
"But let me tell you something: you NEED me. No, shut up, don't open your mouth! You think you're so clever, but think about it: do you really believe that, as a human, you would have been able to off your brother's killer?"He had therefore indicated my wrist ". . . I don't think so." He shook his head, giving me his back. "Your time is up. Next time I come, it will be my last, and then you'll have to make your choice. Think it through before you cut more crap."  
And he was gone, disappearing in the dark of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new chapter! Happy New Year everyone!


	16. Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I felt my lips tremble as I fixed my pupils in his, whispering to him with eagerness:   
> "Do it" repeating it endlessly like a mantra. "Bite me, Carter."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: mentions of suicide, death

I didn't sleep all day.   
I just stood petrified in the loneliness of my room, eyes wide open, in complete silence: my irregular breath was my only company, along with the emotions that came from the outside world, which crossed me as fast and inconstant as the waves of the sea.   
Carter didn't do it.   
The sentence kept spinning like a mantra in my mind, refusing to disappear, making me go crazy.   
I wanted to hit the wall, break everything. and hadn't I been weakened by the infection, I probably would have.   
"WHY?" I screamed at one point. "Why didn't you tell me? You bastard!";   
I hoped, at the bottom of my heart, that the outburst would reach Carter, waking him up suddenly, making him smash that empty cranium right against thw stone lid of his tomb.   
I wanted to kill him. . . my hands were shaking with anger.   
I was dying. Soon, hadn't I killed myself, I would have become a total wreck, like Raglan, if not worse. . . and Noel's killer was still walking around, unpunished.   
What could I do?   
'Your only option' Carter had suggested me several times.   
"No way!" I denied loudly, dropping the idea altogether.   
So what? What the HELL could I do?   
I got up, dragging myself with difficulty to the bathroom, where, on the shelf in front of the mirror, a very sharp pair of scissors had been waiting for me for some time.   
I had prepared them in the hypothesis of suicide, and I had already tried to use them, always giving up in fear at the very last moment.  
I collected the weapon, weighing it for a few seconds, then brought it to my throat, smiling at the tought of Carter's rage when he would hear about my departure.   
He would have to give up his long desired banquet, unless he enjoyed drinking the clotted blood of dead men.   
All I had to do was push the blades, sink them into my flesh. . .   
I stood in that position for a few minutes, mocking the vampire in my mind, staring with dark enchantment at the sharp object pointed at my windpipe.   
Just a little cut, and it would all be over. . . I dropped the scissors in the sink, rubbing my fingers over my eyes.   
I couldn't. Not after what he had told me.   
May that asshole be cursed!   
The doubt had managed to creep into my head: I had no idea what to do, I was lost, desperate, and meanwhile the virus in my veins was still at work.   
I inhaled deeply, using all my strength to think. I limped, staggering on shaky knees , up to one of the few windows of the apartment, looking with an afflicted face at the sunset.   
Soon Carter would wake up and come looking for me, and I just didn't know what to tell him.   
At loss, I moved my gaze to the left, meeting in the distance, after a long time, a well known sight: the shape of the sea.   
Surprised, I watched it for a few minutes. I knew it well, that was the beach where Noel and I had spent several afternoons as children.   
Since then, however, I had never returned: I had completely forgotten about it, as if I had relegated the shore to a secret corner of my head, erasing it from my memories.  
I gazed at it for such a long time that thanks to my new abilities. even if in a not clear way, I managed to make out the slow crashing of the waves in the dim light, the way they went to break softly against the wall of sand, unable to divert the attention.   
I paused briefly, evaluating my possibilities: I could have reached it easily by car, without excessive effort, and then, even if I DID die, I would have been in a better place than I was now.   
Nodding, my mind set, I walked to the drawer by the entrance, taking the Land Rover keys and hurryingly throwing my coat on my shoulders: if Carter really wanted my blood, that night, he would have to struggle a little to get it.

I had driven calmly and carefully until I reached the promenade.   
It wasn't difficult: after an initial bewilderment, the road to follow emerged clearly from the depths of my memory, and in a few minutes I arrived at my final destination.   
So, now, sitting in the semi-darkness, I was listening to the waves breaking on the shore off the coast.   
I'd forgotten that smell, that feeling, so many memories surfaced in my mind.... it seemed like so many years had passed since Noel and I first came here together.   
A tremor crossed my limbs, while the emotions of the past hit me like a train.   
There was a time when I had been able to smile, when Noel and I were not so different.   
As children, we were more than similar, not just in appearance, in everything. They would often mistake us for twins, pointing us out in the streets.   
I don't know when it stopped being like that, but one day the smile was gone forever from my face.   
Being the eldest, I had become a teenager before Noel, and had first had the impact with the harsh outside world. It was devastating: something inside of me had crumpled, and, from what I remembered, my spirit had always been gloomy and melancholic, from then on.   
Despite this, my brother Noel was my total opposite: he was open, funny, full of warmth and never unhappy. He lived every day with energy and optimism.   
I, on the other hand, seemed to be his alter ego: silent, restless, unable to express my feelings, something that I was able to do only through the study of painting.   
I was almost always alone, holding books, paint brushes or a computer. I didn't want anyone to touch me, I was too afraid of getting hurt.  
My parents had never understood that, just like anybody else had never understood me, except Noel.   
In spite of being close minded, I was actually hypersensitive: when I rejoiced, I was in seventh heaven, and when I suffered, I fell into the darkest pit of sadness.   
Noel understood this, and always said, in my defense, that I did not see the world like everybody else, but felt it more than anyone.   
Maybe that was also where my empathy came from, in any case, between me and Noel there had never been competition. My brother was all I wanted to be and couldn't achieve, while I, incredibly, was for him some kind of a misunderstood artist.   
I think Noel envied my sensitivity, which made me isolated and detached from the other people, less skilled and carefree, just like he was.   
I exhaled, throwing myself backwards and lying on my back, smelling the sea air in full.   
"Noel" I whispered, once again missing him. "What do I have to do?" I shut my eyes, knowing that he would not respond, but I could not suppress the desire to have him near.   
I needed help, really. I just wanted someone to tell me what I should have done.   
With some effort, I sat back up, looking at the sun disappearing behind the horizon.   
If I'd become a vampire, I'd never see it again. I would live forever in the darkness of the night.   
On the other hand, if I just died, it would all be over. Noel wouldn't be live again, neither would I, and our family would be extinct forever.   
No one would ever avenge us. No one would have known.   
Could I leave the world and let it happen?   
With that question written in my heart, I looked at the waters, searching for the answer, waiting for a sign that would show me the way.   
At one point, I heard my brother's voice clearly in my mind: it had to be an hallucination, it certainly couldn't be real, but it gave me the answer.   
It was surprising, but suddenly, everything seemed simple and obvious.   
Now I knew what I had to do.

Time passed, the darkness falling into a heavy blanket around my body, cooling it, making me shiver and forcing me to curl up in my coat.   
Winter was coming, soon maybe it would have even snowed.   
A flash of sadness ran through me: we would never again celebrate a Christmas, my family's favorite holiday, whose date coincided with Noel's birthday, whom had in fact been named after the festivity.   
Noel and I loved snow.   
Pulling back my tears, I raised my eyes to the sky just in time to see something white hitting me in the face: it was a snowflake, small and premature, but still.   
Incredulously, I looked around, seeing many of those little frozen crystals fall on the shore, all around me, and on the dark slopes of my coat.   
I've never witnessed such an event before, but it was really beautiful.   
I let the ice flakes cover my clothes and hair, like a sort of cathartic purification.   
Suddenly, in the calm and tranquillity of the ocean, where my empathy did not perceive any kind of emotion, a strange sense of disturbance emerged.   
Someone was here, still far away, but I was no longer alone.   
After the first impact, I was able to focus on it better: it was approaching.   
I guessed, from the mix of sensations that used to accompany him, who the stranger was: when the intruder took a step too far, exceeding the permitted limit, the blood aroused into my veins. Nevertheless, he had not stopped, continuing in my direction, entering my field of vision and sitting next to me, on the shore.   
He had been silent for a few moments, and for a second I seriously thought that he was going to shout at me: his emotions were more confused than usual, but one dominated over them all: anger.   
He snorted, nodding to himself.   
"I've never seen snow by the beach." He finally whispered, shaking his head.   
I studied him quietly, before sending everything to hell and answering:   
"Neither have I."  
Again the conversation dropped, the silence thick and heavy between us like a wall.   
'Don't be a fool, what are you talking about, the weather? You know what he came here for. He wants an answer, and you're ready to give it to him, so why don't you man up and tell him?' I almost opened my mouth, but he anticipated me:  
"You caught me by surprise. I thought that I would find you at home, maybe with a nice fuck off written on the door . . ." he snickered, but I saw clearly that inside he wasn't amused at all. "... But you weren't. It took me over an hour to find you."   
He had not added anything else, indecipherable, limiting himself to staring gloomily at the waves.   
"I needed to think." I shrugged. "That's funny, I haven't been here in years, and yet tonight. . ."  
"I know, I followed your thoughts to find you." He interrupted me, always avoiding meeting my eyes.   
"Then you already know what I've decided." I affirmed, feeling suddenly the anxiety overcome the erotic frenzy.   
"Yes" he confirmed. "BUT" and here he turned to look at me for the first time during our whole conversation. "I want to hear you say it."   
He stared right through me with his black pools, making me blush even further.   
How did he always manage to figure me out?  
"All right." One way or another, I still had to answer him that night. I looked back at him, staring at him with my almond-shaped eyes, holding his gaze. "I want you to turn me."  
Carter held his breath, pressing a white hand on his mouth, hiding a vague smile of triumph.   
"Don't you dare make that face!" I growled, feeling the sudden impulse to kill him.   
God, if only my chances hadn't all depended on him. . . !   
"No, that's not what you think." He snorted. "It's not what I want to HEAR" he explained, cleverly.   
For a moment I stood surprised, without understanding, then I had caught his allusive aura.   
Asshole.  
"I want to give you my blood" I rolled my eyes, disgusted by his pride.   
"Oh, but you can be far more convincing than that!" the vampire erupted in a macabre laugh. "It's not a small favor you ask of me. . ."  
"Please! Like this is not what you've always wanted since the very beginning!" I quitted arguing, knowing it wouldn't matter anyway: Carter wanted to play his favorite game, the cat and mouse one.   
If I really wished to get what I wanted from him, I had to follow his perverse rules.   
I lowered my eyelids, studying him, then I had let my coat slip to the ground, ignoring the cold, trying to repay him with the same money.   
"Take my blood, Carter," I whispered, just inches from his mouth.   
The clear proximity triggered an immediate reaction in both of our bodies: the vampire gave me a satisfied smile, while his irises turned a dark red, ravenous and bloody.   
He inclined his face towards mine, and for a moment I had the terrifying suspicion that he would try to kiss me, but at the last moment he changed direction, lowering on my neck, sniffing deeply.   
"Mmm. . . " I heard from below. A low moan from his throat, immediately followed by a sticky and moist sensation.   
He'd passed his tongue on my trachea.   
"Come here" he roared, clamping his hand around my larynx, and reclining me on my back.   
The thumb of his right hand found my carotid artery, pressing on it and feeling all its rhythmic pulsing, accelerated by the strong excitement of the moment.   
"Listen to me," He called me from above.   
When he had all of my attention (which required some effort on my part), he provided me with what would be the last useful information for me as a human being.   
"It won't be easy. Now I'm gonna drink all your blood until. . . until you're dead."  
I swallowed audibly at hearing that sentence, and Carter, with his fingers on me, noticed it immediately.   
"That's not all. Yours will be a true death, in every sense of the word, along with a burial."  
He stopped and watched me carefully.   
Jesus, buried underground? This must have slipped my mind. . .   
"You'll have to stay there for three days. When the third sun goes down, you'll wake up, and you'll have to get out of your tomb. Don't be afraid, I'll be there to help you. I'll be waiting for you." He reassured me with a strangely gentle inflection in his voice.  
I swallowed another big knot of saliva, trying to keep the terror under control: three days. . . three days underground. All right, but I would have been unconscious, and anyway, it would not have been a true death. I would have woken up.   
Despite this thought, the idea of being buried alone for seventy-two hours under meters of soil gave me panic, and a creepy sense of claustrophobic constriction.   
'Calm down. It's gonna be okay. You'll wake up.'  
"Reiko, I understand very well how you feel, and I can say that because I've been there. But you don't have to be afraid. I'll get you out when the time comes. I promise." Carter once again assured me.   
Sure enough, yet between talking and acting. . .   
"All right, I get it." I nodded, trying not to think too much about it.   
Carter sensed my intentions and returned focusing on the heartbeat through my blood vessels.   
I heard him exhale as his eyes closed in rapture. In the dark, a worrying sparkle had appeared from under her upper lip.   
"Relax, Reiko," he told me in a scary tone. He stuck the phalanges of his left hand in my hair, arching me towards his fangs.   
He passed his entire tongue over my trachea, scratching it with his teeth, but without piercing me.   
The contact of the canines on my skin made me almost call out, causing violent shivers throughout my body.   
"C. . . Carter. . ." the groan escaped me even before I could try and stop it.   
"What is it, Reiko? You want me to bite you?" He blew into my ear, paralyzing me on the ground.   
He nipped the skin under my chin without tearing it, letting it fall back into place, over and over again.  
'God, he is gonna end up killing me without draining me.' I thought, in all my inconsistent reasoning.   
All I wanted at that moment were his canines all the way deep in my artery.   
"Say it" the vampire murmured, breathing on my mouth. "Ask me."  
His eyes were like torches glowing in the dark, shining in such an inhuman way.   
I felt my lips tremble as I fixed my pupils in his, whispering to him with eagerness:   
"Do it" repeating it endlessly like a mantra. "Bite me, Carter."   
The Nightcreeper stood still for a second, carefully anticipating what would happen in a few moments, then he bent slowly over me, never breaking eye contact.   
When he finally reached my neck, he placed his lips just above the junction between the shoulder and throat.   
His fangs pressed against my skin, then, suddenly, they penetrated it, sinking violently into my carotid artery.   
We both shouted in unison, for the violent slap of pleasure that had immediately struck us: my blood begun to flow into Carter's mouth, spilling into warm streams, and the more he sucked, the more I wanted him to take from me.   
I turned my head to the side, looking at the sky above me, the snowflakes falling slowly, shining like tiny shooting stars.   
It was ecstasy: a warm tremor passed through all my limbs, while my soul seemed to rise to touch the sky. Everything was an explosion of sparkling colors; it was like being in the garden of Eden.   
I knew that Carter was feeling the same, I could tell from the rhythm of his breath, from his erection pressed firmly against my leg.   
In the euphoria, I raised his head, disconnecting us without even noticing, to press my lips against his.   
I kissed him ardently, without shame, and he had reciprocated, crushing himself more against my body, making me moan in his mouth.   
We clung together for a while, intensely continuing our exchange, until Carter had closed my tongue between his teeth, cutting again, sucking blood from there.   
Once again, my eyesight tarnished, filling up with bright images, pleasant sensations, and an erotic frenzy.   
After what had seemed to me to be an eternity, the Nightcreeper had come off, giving me one last little smack, before turning back to my neck.   
I could feel my heart beating like crazy in my chest, as his face returned to approach the delicate skin of my throat.   
He passed the tip of his tongue over the two small wounds he had caused me, sinking the canines from the tip to the root again.   
A violent spasm hit me and, even before I realized it, I had come in a fierce orgasm against the hips of the undead.   
Carter smiled against my shoulder, moving one hand to caress me between the thighs, muttering satisfied.   
Drained of my last energies, I felt all strenght abandon me, and oblivion begin to fall on my eyelids.   
Now the vampire's body seemed to weigh an enormous amount, and it compressed me in a suffocating, painful way.   
I was about to die: a vague torpor was spreading within me from my hands and feet; white dots like flies were fogging my sight and a strong lassitude was bearing right into my soul.   
Carter's emotions flowed through my body, reaching my brain as clear as words and sounds.   
"Let go, Reiko. . . sleep. . ."  
Feeling too exhausted for any other kind of reasoning, I nodded slightly, closing my eyes and feeling myself raising in the air.  
Darkness and obscurity had fallen onto me, and a sudden coldness had attacked me, making me like levitate outside of my material ego.   
Silence and infinite space had surrounded me, disintegrating into nothing all of my thoughts, all the components that had defined what I had been.   
Then, without a body form anymore, I had orbited into the nothingness, in the most complete peace of senses.   
It was all over.   
I was dead.


	17. Vampire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I closed my fingers tightly into fists, trying to regain control, cursing myself, but ending up only hurting myself with my new tapered and long nails.   
> "I will find him" I exhaled, instinctively grinding my teeth. "I swear I'll find him."

The first thing that had returned was the sense of smell: a strong and penetrating scent had invaded my nostrils, vaguely disgusting me.   
I was no longer on the sea, it wasn't the smell of water, of wet sand, that I felt, it seemed more like. . . dirt.   
Yes, a terrible stench of damp earth mixed with dust and mold was clogging my nose.   
The second thing, dark and disturbing, was silence.   
I knew I hadn't turned deaf: I could hear perfectly the sound of my breath, anxious because of my surroundings and strangely muffled, with a kind of echo, but apart from that, I did not perceive anything at all.   
With a certain effort, after some time, I blinked, suffocating a cry of fear: I was blind! I didn't see anything but black!   
Now, wheezing, I raised my arms in a jerky motion, wandering in panic, looking for an answer.   
Where the hell was I? What happened? Did I die on the beach? Or did Carter betray me once again?   
Suddenly, in the rasping, my hands hit something solid and hard, above me.   
With my heart in my throat, I placed both palms on it, touching it, feeling along its perimeter, then slowly descending to my sides, and finally under my back.   
I was lying down. Lying in what looked like a box.   
"Jesus!" I sobbed, won by terror.   
I was alive, I was still alive, in a wooden box, buried God knew how many feet underground!   
I wasn't dead, I was alive and well present, I must have just lost consciousness, and Carter had buried me anyway and would leave me here for. . . how much was it? Three days?   
I was doomed! The air would never last this long.   
"Christ. . ." I cursed, slamming my knuckles on the panel above my face, desperately scratching it with my nails: was it just an impression or was it hellish hot, in here?  
"Let me out!" I screamed, panicked.   
It couldn't have ended this way! That couldn't have been true! It had to be a nightmare. . .   
I breathed anxiously, pressing my hands on my eyes, mentally counting up to twenty, trying to regain control.   
I had to stay calm, or I'd just needlessly consume oxygen.   
When I opened my lids again, I was amazed: my arms! I could see them! And also my fingertips, my nails, even the tiny lines that chiseled my phalanges: I could see every detail, without the slightest source of light.   
'What the hell...?' I thought, confused.   
Was is possible that. . .   
Incredulously, I looked around again, now noticing the veins of the wood that made up my coffin: it was a parallelepiped of rough, unworked planks, held firmly together by large nails that seemed rusty.  
So I was not in an actual coffin, but simply in a large container like the ones that were generally used to pack goods.   
Nice work, Carter. . .   
Still shaken and surprised by my new ability, I had suddenly picked up a dull noise, far away, sharp and repeated.  
Alarmed, I immobilized myself with my ears wide open, trying to distinguish its origin: it was not accidental, and it had a precise cadence.   
Sound of footsteps.   
"Footsteps. . . there's someone! Someone who can help me get out of here!" I realized, in a sudden flash of hope.   
"Help! Hey up there, I'm here! Help me!" I violently hit on the lid, trying to make as much noise as I could, when I heard a disturbing crunch and the wood discard under my blows. I had shattered it, and the ground above me had begun to fall in a fine drizzle, on my cheeks and clothes.   
"Impossible!" I coughed, in shock.   
I just broke a few inches thick panel without even scratching my skin!  
"What the fuck. . .!" I exclaimed, freezing suddenly when I felt a weird sensation building in my guts.   
It was something strange that I'd never experienced before.   
It was a PRESENCE, yes, there was someone, but it wasn't a human being.   
"There's a vampire here." I realized, marvelling at my own guess.   
I knew it was a Nightcreeper, and maybe, using my empathy, I could discover something more.   
I closed my eyes, cleared my mind, tried to concentrate. It wasn't hard in the dark and under all that soil. . .   
Immediately, a series of emotions found their way into me. . . not as clear and defined as the ones I had been able to feel before, but they were there: restlessness, anguish and a peculiar, macabre curiosity.   
I knew that kind of aura well. It could only be Carter.   
"Carter. . . CARTER!" I screamed with all the air I had in my lungs.   
The undead, meters above, had taken a break in his walking, to then kneel and feel the ground.   
"Reiko?" He called.   
"YES!" I rejoiced, not believing my luck and my ears: Carter had returned, perhaps he had realized his mistake and had come to get me out!   
"Listen to me" he said in a high tone. "I'm gonna dig you out now. You stay still and don't move a muscle, you understand? Otherwise, the wood will collapse."   
With the unattractive prospect of having meters of mud compressed on my face, I crossed my arms tightly over my chest, shouting my consent to him.   
There was a second of absolute stillness, then I heard Carter start to move the land on the surface.   
The scraping continued for a long time, for what seemed like an eternity, until, finally, I had not heard him incite me:   
"Push the top up!"  
I had taken a deep breath, placing my palms on the plank and pressing with all the force I had in my body.  
Surprisingly, the entire block easily carved, causing the bottom of the lid to recline down into the ground, while the top emerged to the surface, letting a dim light and the fresh air of the night leak in.   
Coughing, I placed my elbows on the side walls of the grave, balancing to lift myself out of the mound.   
Carter helped me by bringing me up to my feet.   
Once I recovered a certain stability, I shook the remains of the clods off and looked around me, trying to understand where I was, with the moon as the only source of light.   
A cemetery.   
"No way!" I murmured, unable to contain myself.   
Carter snickered behind my back, making me turn in his direction.   
"You buried me HERE? They could have caught you. . ." I asked him, confused.   
"No one did." He cut me off, with his arms folded, studying me. "You're a real sight." He chuckled.  
I had to be filthy to the tip of my hair.   
"No, I didn't mean that." He had read my mind, leaving me speechless: if he could do it, then I was really still alive! I wasn't dead at all!   
Carter had rolled his eyes, pitying me.   
"No, you idiot, you have it all wrong! Here, take this." He put a mirror that he had fished out of one of the pockets in his coat in my hand. "Look at you." He incited me, pushing it towards my face.   
Suspicious, I raised it to my face, remaining completely speechless.   
"My God, I'm really. . . dead."  
I wasn't human. I really wasn't. Everything that once might have looked like me was gone now, it had changed into something. . . ethereal.  
My complexion had lightened slightly, but still remained a darker tone than Carter's washed out one, while my eyes and hair had retained their colour, but took on abnormal reflections, too perfect even for porcelain dolls.   
And then, there were my teeth. . . pearly and shining, as if they had been made of ivory, with the canines elongated and sharpened compared to those I had before, even if not in an excessive way.   
I had fangs too now, even though Carter's ones seemed even scarier.   
"Don't worry, they'll grow when you'll feel hungry." He giggled, sending a shiver down my spine.   
The blood. I didn't think about that. . . how was I supposed to feed?   
"We will discuss this later. We have so much to talk about now." The Nightcreeper smiled. "You're so beautiful. . ." he whispered in the darkness, bringing down a silence full of embarrassment.   
Suddenly, I remembered the events of my last night, by the sea, when, taken by the erotic euphoria, I had kissed him without the slightest shame.   
'Shit!'  
What the hell was I thinking?   
"Ah, well. . ." I stuttered, not knowing exactly what to say.   
Carter laughed knowingly.  
"Don't worry, this isn't the first time it's happened." He 'reassured' me. "Of course, I would never have expected it from YOU. Anyway. . . it wasn't so bad." He alluded, mischievously, giving me the instinct to run away to the nearest wall to hide behind it.   
"Hmm, and is irony a dark gift, or is it all in your bag?" I hit back so he wouldn't notice my clear embarrassment.   
The Nightcreeper only snorted, without saying a word.   
I looked with a vague sense of confusion the tomb from which I had just come out: I was dead in earnest. I was buried for three days, and now I was. . . resurrected.  
Humanity was no longer my concern, I would never have seen a sunrise again, or the sun itself, or my parents.   
My parents. First Noel, and now I. . . they'd lost both their children, but they'd never have a place to mourn them both. They would never have known what had happened to me, they would always have waited for me, praying to see me reappear on their doorstep.   
This was not fair, yet I had made my decision by leaving that day home, walking forever out of their lives. I had vowed myself to revenge and had now lost them, just as they had lost me.   
I had been very selfish, taken by my pain I had not thought about theirs, which must have been as heartbreaking as mine, and what had I done? I had only been able to double it.   
"Sorry" I whispered in the void, feeling reddish tears shining behind my eyelids.   
Behind me, Carter approached me and calmly laid a hand on my arm.   
"I know," he said, in a tone more subdued than mine, then indicated with a vague nod of the head the mound next to the one where I had been buried. "That's why I put you there."  
Interestedly, I focused on the tombstone: NOEL H. SENSHII.   
My brother's grave.   
"So when your people come to visit him, it'll be like they come to visit you too." He murmured.   
Upset by the sight, by that name, I had fallen on my knees just below the slab, incredulous, raising a trembling hand to touch it, as if it could suddenly vanish under my touch.   
"Noel" I spelled, feeling something breaking inside me.   
I'd never visited his grave before. I never did, perhaps because of some kind of rejection, or intrinsic terror. and I didn't want it, I didn't want him to be truly dead.   
He was still alive in my mind.   
And yet, now, he was in front of me, and he was so real. . . as the letters hollowed out of the marble of his grave.   
'BELOVED SON, BROTHER. . .'  
I hated life, I hated the whole world.   
"Why him? WHY HIM?" I sobbed without even realizing it. My voice was so far away from me, like I was in a foggy bank.   
I cried and cried, as I had avoided doing before, I let myself go, venting that pain and that resentment that I had been carrying inside me for months, until the strong metallic smell of my tears had not made me stop.   
I closed my fingers tightly into fists, trying to regain control, cursing myself, but ending up only hurting myself with my new tapered and long nails.   
"I will find him" I exhaled, instinctively grinding my teeth. "I swear I will find him."  
It was the only purpose I still breathed for.   
I stood up, cleaning my face, covered in blood, and casting a meaningful look to Carter.   
I didn't understand that vampire, I didn't really, but it didn't matter.   
"So" I had spoken, after having passed one last caress on my brother's sepulchral stone. "Where to?"   
Carter grew one of his sibylline smiles on his face before he answered me:   
"Home."


	18. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What am I supposed to do?" I asked him, keeping my eyes down.  
> I hated to show myself vulnerable in front of him, but I had no other choice: I couldn't do it alone, I still ignored too many things.

After filling up what had been, for a few nights, my tomb, hiding the obvious signs of my 'resurrection', we moved silently along the gloomy alleys of the cemetery.  
I had cast restless glances at every corner, amazed at how much my condition had changed: it was as if I was walking in full sunlight, no shadow or darkness could prevent my sight, not to mention that my field of vision had increased exponentially.  
A sudden movement caught my attention: some kind of nocturnal bird zipped in the dark, very far from me, emitting low, guttural verses.  
It was incredible and scary at the same time, I felt strong and powerful, but also unnatural.  
The snow that had begun to fall, the night of my human death, had covered the wide expanses of gravestones around us, thick and pure.  
It had to be terribly cold, yet all I felt was a vague, almost imperceptible, chill.  
"Crazy." I whispered to myself, emitting a cloud of breath.  
Carter giggled, noticing my perplexity in front of the new abilities that had been given to me.  
"I must seem stupid to you" I joked, seeing myself through his eyes, without needing to use my empathy.  
"No, Reiko, that's completely normal." He grinned. "You should have seen ME!"  
He had suddenly stilled, his face taking a dark turn.  
"Like a child at Christmas?" I sassed, but already knowing from his expression that the answer could not be that.  
"Not exactly." He confirmed, speeding up the pace, firmly dropping the conversation.  
Only then did I realize what I was doing: I was a VAMPIRE, the enemy, and I was relying on Carter, about whom I knew practically nothing.  
I've always been convinced he had killed my brother, but now everything was extremely confusing.  
I had no idea what I was actually dealing with: who was Carter? When did he die? Who turned him into a vampire?  
"Reiko, don't make me regret my actions right away." He growled, sensing my conjectures, snapping at me like a ravenous wolf.  
Taken by surprise, I held back the horde of thoughts that ran through my mind.  
"But. . . Carter. . . ?"I asked astonished, ignoring his murderous gaze.  
"Look, Reiko, the past is past. It doesn't matter what I used to be, and you shouldn't even care about what YOU used to be. You should put your mortal life behind you and find yourself another purpose. Otherwise your revenge will consume you to the marrow." He told me in a serious tone, staring at me with his two black pits.  
"No, you can forget it!" I opposed, without even considering the possibility for a moment.  
"Fine then, do as you please, but don't bother me with your vanities! Now, come on, we have to go home. Dawn is approaching." He shrugged, evidently pissed, leaving me speechless.  
What an absurd man! He was incomprehensible: the more I studied, the less I understood him, with his fickle character, never fixed on a single emotion for more than ten seconds.  
He was impetuous and vehement.  
"Go where? What do you mean, 'home'?" I insisted, irritated by all those mysteries.  
"The crypt." He replied, looking around in a distracted way.  
"The CRYPT?!" I repeated, shocked. "The one in St-James?"  
It couldn't have been, we'd never get there in time!  
"Right. That's why I'm gonna teach you your first vampire trick now!" He said with a clever smirk, winking at me as if our (almost) quarrel had never happened.  
"What...?" I stuttered, in the most complete confusion.  
I still couldn't believe I was dead, or rather, undead, and here we were talking about. . .  
"De-materialize us?" I exhaled before I even realized it.  
Carter bursted in a roar of laughter, which could have easily awakened the dead.  
"Reiko, don't be stupid!" he howled, shaking his head.  
"But. . ."  
"It's true, you're a vampire. Empathetic, apparently, but that doesn't mean the rest of your powers will come alone. You can't learn shapeshifting on your first night, not to mention you're undernourished." He observed, with his arms folded.  
"So. . .?"  
"SO. . . vampires drive cars, too." He interrupted me, lifting his right hand into the air, holding a car key.  
He pressed a button, activating the automatic opening.  
"What the hell!" I exclaimed, seeing my Land Rover waiting for us, hidden in the shadows.  
"Nice. Very comfortable." The Nightcreeper commented, with a grin.  
"And very MINE. . ." I incinerated him in turn, still failing to believe my eyes.  
"Well, when you died three nights ago on the beach, it remained there, unused. . . it would have been a shame to waste it, not to mention that I could certainly not bring you here to bury you by feet! I mean, I may be undead, but your ass is pretty heavy. . ."  
"ALL RIGHT, thank you for your kind thoughts." I cut him off, enraged, heading for the driver's door.  
"Nope" Carter denied, pushing me sideways. "I'll drive."  
"I'm sorry?!" I raised my voice, clearly feeling like throwing a huge punch at him.  
"Don't worry, I won't scratch your little gem! We don't have time to argue: it's late, you don't know the shortcuts, the sun is about to rise, you're just reborn and not yet accustomed to your new condition. In addition, before we arrive and go to sleep, we must have a chat to make a couple of things clear. Therefore..."  
"Therefore, whatever!" I rolled my eyes and threw myself in the passenger seat with little grace.  
With an automatic gesture, I had fastened my belt, but I couldn't help but wonder if not putting it on would have made any difference at this point.  
Carter jumped behind the wheel, inserting the key and starting the engine. Seeing him driving my car had a terrible effect on me, but the sun would have come up before I could convince him to switch places, so I might as well give up.  
Without even a hint of a belt, he steered to his left, abruptly reversing, launching us into the darkness, towards our destination.  
I lowered the small mirror on the flap in front of me, looking at myself once again: it was really strange, the smells, the world, the interior of my car were always the same, and yet I was completely changed.  
I stared at my eyes in the dark, unable to avert my attention: I really liked them, now. . . normally their colour had always irritated me, that boring, banal brown, while now they seemed to shine, emanating their own light.  
They were gorgeous and vivid.  
"If you're done with fogging your mirror, I have two things to say to you." Carter called on me, his big black lakes carefully glued to the road.  
"All right." I nodded, closing the flap and giving him my full attention.  
"Okay. So, just to begin with, before touching the FOOD subject . . . " he had paused, throwing me a transversal look.  
Food. . . yeah. A very taboo subject to talk about.  
"We'd better discuss the big mess you made while you were still alive."  
I was puzzled for a second, not really understanding what he was referring to.  
Carter emitted a noise, a sort of incredulous exclamation, grinding his teeth like a famished lion.  
"Trevor?" He then suggested, clenching his hands on the steering wheel until his knuckles whitened.  
"Trevor?" I repeated like a fool. "What. . . Oh, my God! Oh, SHIT!" I suddenly realized, remembering the latest events.  
"Yeah, shit." the vampire agreed in a low voice. "I hope he's still waiting for you to bring my head back to him."  
I paled visibly, and then I felt myself blushing even more furiously. After all, when I appeared before Trevor and promised him Carter's head in exchange for the location of his hiding place, I was sincerely convinced that he was my brother's killer.  
"Do you think he's already found out? I mean, that I've been turned. . ."  
"Into a vampire? I don't know." He admitted, taking a strange expression.  
And here was again that dark aura that kept creeping back, the one that left me perplexed every time.  
"Trevor is a powerful Nightcreeper, he should never be underestimated. Anyway, it's possible they all think you're still alive, and that's precisely why. . ." he stopped at a crossroad, completely deserted, turning to look at me. "You can't keep exposing yourself."  
"WHAT? I'm sorry, but how can I. . ."  
"I don't care about Noel, Reiko! I know that if you have accepted all this it is to discover your brother's killer, but if you really want to succeed in your intent and avoid the clash with Trevor, you must give up the Vigilante, at least for the moment."  
I remained silent, reciprocating his gaze for a few minutes, too altered to reply.  
"You can't just walk around impaling vampires now that you're one of them!" He insisted, grabbing me by the shoulder.  
That was true. I'd be lynched if I'd just tried. The Nightcreepers did not accept that one of them would stand as their leader, let alone be slaughtered by one of their own race. Also, Trevor was out looking for me, probably putting a reward on my head, and although I now possessed supernatural strength, I was still at a disadvantage to him.  
"Damn it" I whispered through my teeth, hands in my hair, still filthy with soil. "What am I supposed to do?" I asked him, keeping my eyes down.  
I hated to be vulnerable in front of Carter, but I had no choice. I couldn't do it on my own, I was still lacking in the undead field.  
Carter had taken a breath, crossing his elbows on the steering wheel, vaguely raising his shoulders.  
"I don't know. For now, you'd better stand back and avoid attract attention on yourself. After all. . ." and here he got up to look at me with an ironic flash in his eyes. ". . . you're pretty good at lurking in the shadows, aren't you?"  
I snorted, incinerating him where he was: "Hurry up, do you want to spend the rest of eternity at this stop?"  
In response, he had stared at me in silence, unconsciously playing with his lip piercing.  
In the end, he nodded to himself, starting up and driving my car back along the country road that was leading away from the cemetery.  
Winter had now arrived: a blanket of ice covered the fields, trees and paths that went up to the doors of the houses, owned by generations of farmers.  
The frost, although Carter and I did not produce the slightest source of heat in the cockpit, had covered the windshield and part of the windows, making the view of the outside world distorted and unreal.  
"Why?" I pondered out loud, without even realizing it.  
"What?"  
"Why empathy? I mean. . ." I stopped when I heard his laughter.  
"You don't want to ask yourself that, Reiko." He sounded amused. "There is no logical explanation. I don't know why I can read minds either."  
"Read in humans' minds, you mean." I pointed out, remembering when he explained his ability to me.  
"And in YOURS." He'd dropped in such a subdued tone, that I hadn't almost grasped it.  
"Excuse me?!" I cried.  
Carter just snickered, merry as the Easter Bunny.  
"I made you, didn't I? Has to mean something."  
"So that's why I can still, like. . ."  
"Read my emotions? Yeah, almost certainly. I mean, don't expect to sense much in others like us, except of course their presence. That's gonna be a constant feeling." He explained to me, turning abruptly at a roundabout.  
"Ah" I nodded, turning my attention thoughtfully outside the window.  
"Ask me." Carter suddenly said, shaking me from the state of trance into which I had momentarily plummeted.  
"What?" I asked, confused. I had so many questions in my mind, I had no idea what he was talking about.  
"Oh, you know. I can see it so clearly in your head." He laughed like a truck driver. "Ask me about SEX!" He winked, giving me some kind of elbow frat-move right in the flank.  
"I'm sorry, sex?" I'd repeated as a fool, and actually feeling like one.  
"Oh, Jesus, Reiko, where have you lived, in a convent so far? I hope it's because of the bad books you read about us." Carter rolled his eyes, incredulous.  
"How the fuck would I kn... I'm sorry, but what do YOU know about what I read? Oh, my God, don't tell me. . ." I put my hands up in the air so that I wouldn't hear any of it.  
"What, did you forget I was stalking you? I've been watching you long enough to say I know you like the bottom of my pockets... so you can imagine my surprise when, going through your head, I found out that you were still. . ."  
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" I screamed and risked having my jeep roll over.  
Carter was roaring with laughter, bright red on his cheeks, a color very similar to that of my face, although for a totally different reason.  
"Don't laugh, you fucker, don't even try! And by the way, you don't know a damn thing about me and my life, okay? And I absolutely didn't want to ask you about. . . that. Pervert." I panted, like a pissed-off bull.  
"Ooh, OK, VIRGIN." He mocked me back, looking at me with a glint of mischief in his pupils.  
I stared at him as I felt horrified that my neck was becoming cyanotic with shame.  
Huge bastard.  
We stood silent as tombs, while Carter continued to drive, leaving the main road and taking a dirty track that climbed steeply up, on top of the mountain where the cemetery of St-James was located.  
I clenched my fists tightly against my stomach, cursing the vampire in my brain, hoping that he would catch on it.  
I was more humiliated than pissed: I had never told anyone, not even Noel had ever known, even if, surely, he must have sensed it.  
What an asshole.  
Carter had given me another look, which I had openly ignored.  
Eventually, just as we were finally reaching and passing through the village of St-James, he had whispered a quiet:  
"I'm sorry." In a soft tone.  
"Eh, you better be!" I grumbled without even looking at him.  
He was a little less of a jerk, but he still a dick.  
A couple of bends later, we were standing in front of the falling cemetery gate.  
"Here we are." The half-ass announced, trying so obviously to break the ice.  
"Hm." It was all he had gotten, while the Land hopped through the wrecks and heaps of stones to the crypt.  
Our crypt. MY own.  
"Sounds cool, doesn't it?" Carter sugarly added, turning off the headlights and the engine, as he couldn't help but stick his nose into the thoughts of others.  
"Listen, do me a favor, stop it, okay? You're nicer when you act like a jerk, really!" I attacked him, unhooking with little grace the belt and jumping out of the door, approaching to the entrance with wide strikes.  
I had launched a distracted glance at the statue of the penitent man, holding the remains of the broken rosary in his hand, without being able to avoid considering that it was right here that it all began. This was where I got injured.  
Carter had tinkered a few moments around the car, closing it, then reaching me by the door.  
"I'm sorry" I asked him, stunned. "Do you leave it in plain sight in the middle of nowhere? What if during the day someone. . ."  
"No one will see it. It's safe here, don't worry, I would never sleep in a place that wasn't." He replied by putting his left hand in his trousers pocket and pulling out the key to the new padlock that he had used to lock the entrance.  
"You made me spend a lot of money." He joked, seeing how I was looking at the new chain, after I had cut off the first one.  
"If you say so." I bit sarcastically back, not feeling comfortable at all.  
I only needed a couple of cutters to get in, the last time. . .  
Carter pushed the stone panel on its hinges, which had opened placidly without the slightest sound inward.  
Everything had remained exactly as I remembered it: the dust, the cobwebs, the air of decadence, the pile of books and scribbled sheets abandoned on an ancient table, pushed into a corner.  
"Speaking of bad readings. . ." I couldn't help but point out, lifting Van Helsing's diary in the air, while the vampire closed the door behind us, barring it with a huge metal bar. So much for security and all the cutters in the world.  
Carter had taklen the hit, but immediately reciprocated with a sneaky whisper. "How would you know?"  
Despite myself, I had in turn twisted my face in a grin that unmasked me, throwing the book in its place, along with all the others.  
All of a sudden, a strong sense of tiredness had enveloped my limbs, making my eyelids drop heavily on my eyes.  
I tppl a look through the cracked, filthy stained-glass window of the tomb, noticing that the sky was suffusing slowly with warm colors.  
The dawn was coming.  
"It's time." Carter nodded, moving to the center of the mausoleum and uncovering his coffin.  
Only then did I realize that it was no longer set aside the wall, but where it was originally supposed to be, in the middle of the room.  
Next to it, there was another one, surely the one that had contained the skeleton.  
"Not anymore." Chuckled Carter, pushing the lid for me.  
Intrigued and partly afraid of what I might find inside, I had approached to observe, speechless: the inside of the stone coffin had been completely cleaned, dusted and deprived of any of its horrible contents. A pillow of velvet, real red velvet, the kind that cost a fortune, had been laid at the bottom, accompanied by sheets of the same color.  
"Wow" I let slip, enchanted by the vision.  
A vague scent of musk and spices emanated from the stones, as well.  
"Do you like it?" Inquired the Nightcreeper in front of me, evidently pleased.  
He certainly knew the answer, but wanted to hear it.  
"Yes." I admitted. "...You?" I asked, incredulous.  
Carter had eloquently raised an eyebrow. In fact, who else could it have been?  
"But. . ."  
"No. You needed a place to sleep. . . and it wouldn't have been nice to put you with the skeleton." He curled his nose, flashing his fangs in the semi-darkness.  
"Yeah." I smiled without wanting to, unable to look away from the coffin. "Carter. . ."  
"It's getting late." He interrupted me. "Come on."  
He had stretched out his hand to help me get into it, and only then had the idea struck me: I was about to find myself once again lying in a tomb, even though not a few feet underground.  
Suddenly, the red velvet didn't seem so pleasant anymore.  
"Reiko, don't be stupid, you've already been locked for three days in a claustrophobic wooden crate, with pounds of earth above your head. You're not afraid to get into this, aren't you? It'll be like lying in a bed of roses!"  
He looked at me impatiently, always with his hand outstretched towards me.  
I swallowed a huge gulp of saliva, the size of a big toad, strenghtening myself and grasping his hand firmly, climbing over the wall and sitting inside the casket.  
"Now lie down." Carter encouraged me by pushing me back slowly. I had obeyed and found myself completely lying on the soft tissue underneath me.  
The feeling it gave against my body was lovely, but the high marble walls that surrounded me provoked me a violent sense of oppression.  
"Don't worry, it's a matter of practice." He reassured me, noting the distressed expression on my face. "I can sleep with you if you need company." He had therefore proposed, without any double entendre for once.  
"No, I'll. . . I'll be fine." I refused, trying to place a confident smile on my lips.  
Carter snickered, still respecting my decision.  
"All right. But if you need me, you know where to find me." He winked, then, seeing my air of confusion, he added: "I'm light sleeper."  
After that, he moved to close the heavy slab of stone over me.  
"Rest now. Tomorrow's gonna be a long night."  
"Carter." I called him before couldn't stop myself: there was a question that had been going on for hours into my mind since he mentioned our bond, in the car. The one between the vampire and his blood child.  
"Yes?"  
"I. . . wanted to ask you, before. . ." I had taken a break, trying hard to organize the words: Carter was a strange individual, so dark and mysterious. . . I didn't know a thing about his past and, although perhaps I had any right to, I didn't know if it was really a good idea to ask him such a question.  
"Reiko. . ." the vampire started almost alarmed, reading from my mind in advance the sense of my reasoning.  
"Who made you a vampire?" I blurted out, surprising even myself.  
Carter was dumbfounded, shutting himself up in a completely unnatural silence.  
Through my empathy I had seen a strange whirlwind of emotions manifest itself in him: for a single moment I thought I had spotted a clear sensation, stronger than the others, but before I could focus on it, Carter had closed the window in my face, leaving me in complete darkness.  
"It's late, Reiko. Sleep." He whispered to me, finishing walling me up in that new coffin.  
I stood awake for a few more minutes in the dark, too caught up in what I had perceived to be able to fall into panic.  
I had seen Carter's expression, just before the light disappeared.  
There was something about his past that disturbed him: every time I tried to learn more, especially about his first experiences as a vampire, he would freeze, like an iceberg.  
But why so much reticence? Who turned Carter? Was he, or she, dead? Was it one of the ones I killed?  
With these questions revolving in my head, I had felt tiredness press on my eyelids and I had slowly abandoned myself to my first, true, dreamless vampire sleep.


	19. Blood night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I frowned, upset, feeling once again trapped against my will.  
> Since this story had began, contrary to my expectations, I had never led the game: I had always ended up being at the mercy of the actions of someone else, and this was starting to drive me crazy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: bloodsucking, hints of slash :)

When I opened my eyes again, I looked around confusedly, unable to remember where I was, then I felt the reassuring oriental smell of musk invading my nostrils and the events of the night before had manifested into my mind.  
I was a Vampire, an undead, and I had just spent my first morning in my tomb, next to Carter.  
CARTER.  
I could still hear the words of anger we had exchanged a few hours before: he had behaved as per his usual, as in like a real huge asshole, then he had tried to make me forgive him, like a child apologizing after breaking the third consecutive vase with a soccer ball.  
Recalcitrant and stubborn, impulsive and arrogant, but always full of regret, even when it was too late.  
Stupid.  
On the other hand, the last topic we had touched in our conversation had left me with a strange apprehension: I had seen that light in his eyes, and sensed that confusion, within him, when I'd asked him THAT question.  
What could have troubled him so much? Maybe the person who did turn him had been a monster towards him. . . or he had been transformed by pure chance. . . maybe he had no idea who his maker was, or was someone with whom he no longer had relations. Or, more likely, as I had already considered, he was dead.  
Killed by me? Hard to say. . . however, in my (not so long) career as the Vigilante, I had never crossed paths with a truly powerful Nightcreeper, not as strong as he or Trevor, at least.  
It was all very strange: clearly, he was hiding something from me and wouldn't tell me about it until he decided to trust me completely.   
I could understand: after all, we didn't know each other well, even though I didn't find fair that, while he was aware of my most hidden secrets, thanks to his ability, I was wondering like a blind man in the dark.  
I frowned, upset, feeling once again trapped against my will.  
Since this story had began, contrary to my expectations, I had never led the game: I had always ended up being at the mercy of the actions of someone else, and this was starting to drive me crazy.  
I sighed, turning on one side with some difficulty, dragging most of the velvet sheets with me.  
'Damn it. . .'  
I was tired of that vicious cycle, I absolutely had to know more and find out the truth, starting with my brother's killer real identity.  
Who knew, maybe investigating one secret would solve the other. . . or things would turn out even more complicated, like it had already happened.   
'Shit. . .'  
Suddenly, my thoughts had returned to the shameful scene we had made in the car.  
'virgin" Carter had mocked me.  
Damn him and his ability to read people's thoughts! Who the HELL did he think he was? Of course, the big city playboy, whom all the supermodels fell for! Ha! Fuck him!  
I still felt the humiliation, I had certainly not chosen to find myself in that condition! Oh, what the hell was I thinking? He was just an asshole, the typical loudmouth who paraded around just because his hair was bleached and his tongue pierced (okay, he had his LIP pierced, but the concept was just the same)!  
…   
I could offend him as much as I wanted, but I knew he was unfortunately right: Carter was, despite his arrogance, charismatic and charming, a couple qualities that I had never possessed, and that made me pretty much only. . . envious? Bah! No way!  
I clashed my hands against the cold stone walls, realizing that I would never fall asleep again as it happened to mortals: Vampires' sleep was similar to death, and once passed, it meant it was time to rise, because the night had fallen.  
With a sigh of surrender, I raised the arms above me, to uncover my tomb, without finding, against all my human expectations, the slightest difficulty in doing so.   
My new abilities amazed me day by day.  
I slowly lifted myself up, peeping out of the tomb, looking around me: no light was leaking from the vague openings across the curtains, everything seemed immersed in a particularly waiting atmosphere.   
Only a small cone of light burned through, flickering in the dark, on the table pushed into the corner that served as a desk for Carter.  
And the Nightcreeper was right there, sitting in a sort of empire style armchair, with his legs raised and his feet resting with little grace on a stack of books.  
He seemed focused on reading, but had of course sensed my awakening, therefore he had immediately called me out:  
"Hello, Reiko. Rather than noise, it was the incessant horde of your thoughts that distracted me." He raised an eyebrow, looking sideways in my direction.  
Of course. Reading other people's thoughts was his favorite sport.  
"I don't always do it by choice, sometimes. . . they just flow. Yours, mostly." He curled his lips in a mocking grin, bringing his attention back to what seemed like a dusty, falling old volume.  
"Ah, so it's other people's fault if they think too much and you mind their own business." I considered, hoisting myself out of the stone coffin with a vague smile, even if he had already managed to irritate me.   
"Hmm!" He snorted in turn, raising a finger in the air, as if to mark me one point.  
"What is it?" I asked him eying the tome, not daring to imagine the answer.  
Carter cast an indecipherable glance at me before looking down and answering:  
"Poems."  
I couldn't help but laughing.  
"I'm sorry." I grunted, noticing his homicidal expression, but only ending up with an hysterical attack. "I didn't. . ." I was so exhilarated I couldn't finish the sentence.  
"Yes, of course!" Carter had growled, grinding his teeth, closing the big book with a thud and sprinting towards the door.  
Only now I was able to read its author: Wordsworth. Oh, God. . .  
I followed him with a big grin as he was about to close the door behind us with the padlock.  
"Oh come on, Carter, there's nothing wrong with that! Even the blackest souls sometimes come into contact with their feminine side!" I provoked him.  
The raven haired responded by walking directly to the Land Rover, mounting on it (on the driver's side, of course), slamming the door.  
When I climbed up too, ignoring my own seatbelt (it might go to hell, for all I cared, wasn't I already dead, after all?), he turned to me, with a strange expression of complacency on his face.  
"Where are we going?" I asked him, the smirk dying on my mouth: I knew well that air of triumph, I was certain that he must have in mind something bizarre.  
"To EAT." He answered me with candor, enjoying my immediate terror.  
I tried to get out, but he locked the car doors and quickly started reversing, making the wheels screech on the cemetery gravel.  
"Carter!" I roared at him, in the most threatening way I could summon up.  
I wasn't prepared for that at all, I couldn't do it that night, do it right away!  
"Shut up. You may starve to death, but I have every intention of feeding myself." He cut it short, turning on the lights and launching us into the night.   
I swallowed a bunch of saliva the size of an apple, sweating cold: I knew that human blood would now be my only source of livelihood, but the thought of attacking someone, especially an innocent human, like a child or girls, repelled me immensely.  
The Vampire driving, however, seemed more than firm in his purpose, and anyway, I could not escape it forever. Sooner or later hunger would have clouded my mind; the longer I waited, the worse it would have become.  
In fact, the most violent Nightcreepers were the ones who ate the least, an obvious symptom of their (our) monstrous nature.  
So as nauseated as I was, I had to do it, and as soon as possible, as long as I had the slightest control over myself.  
"What do you have in mind?" I asked my pale companion as we entered the city walls.  
Carter turned an empty and enigmatic look at me with one of his black irises, without answering me.  
Annoyed and irritated by his attitude, I sighed loudly and turned to the window, beginning to recognize the roads on which we were travelling.  
A few minutes later, the Land Rover turned into a parking lot of a deserted supermarket and stopped across two parking spaces, announcing the end of our trip.  
"I don't understand." I told Carter right after I got out of the car.  
"What?" Was all I'd gotten, in a bored tone.  
"Why choose a victim and follow him or her for so many months, and then hunt and bleed out strangers almost every night?"  
It was a perfectly legitimate question, an issue I had never understood about the world of the undead.  
"You mean why do we stick so much to someone without twisting a hair on them for weeks and meanwhile we eat random blokes whenever we feel like it?" He had repeated, setting off on the dark streets, carefully observing each alley.  
"That's right."  
"Well, let's see, I could make a comparison with sex, but I don't think you'd understand. . ." he roasted me, without the slightest hint of smile on his face.  
I got stuck on the sidewalk, staring at him grimly: he was taking that story far too long.  
"All right, all right, let's put it this way: the people we choose to follow are special to us. They are not just victims, but people we find more interesting than others, on whom we like to spend time. As you said yourself, it is not essential that this happens, we can very well feed ourselves by drinking from humans that we do not care about, or that we even despise. However, sometimes we do, we follow someone in particular and we also share long moments with them, until we decide to reach climax, and drink from them.  
"God, it really does sound like something sexual. . ."  
"I told you, but it's more complicated than that. Many of these people, in fact, are often not simply killed and forgotten, but transformed into Vampires."  
I looked at him, amazed.  
"You mean that's how you basically choose your 'mates'? I mean. . ." I stopped, blushing at his smug expression.  
"I didn't mean US, you idiot" I cut him with my eyes, walking around him and giving my back to him.  
"You said it!" He laughed, trotting around me.  
"HA, I'm dying from. . ." I didn't have time to finish the sentence that Carter had silenced me by grabbing my right arm.  
"What is it?" I questioned, alarmed, sure that if I turned around I would have seen Trevor's horrendous face.  
"We just found our dinner." He lit up, pointing me in the right direction with one of his long fingers.  
There was a man, a bricklayer or perhaps one of those guys that worked on the piers, big and square, taller than us of at least one abundant inch, with the widest arms I had ever seen.  
"But. . . Carter. . . ?" I whispered in shock, expecting everything but what seemed to be a rather shady and dangerous bloke.   
"He's going to feed us both, dummy, what did you expect? A supermodel?" He growled, starting to move in his direction. "When you'll eat on your own, you'll be able to choose who you want."  
"I mean, did you look at him? He'll break us in two!" I instinctively followed him, whispering in panic.  
"Yeah, right." He looked at me eloquently, rolling his eyes to the night sky.  
Once in his presence, the guy had looked at us, spitting on the filthy little road before grunting: "Looking for trouble?"  
Carter's change had been immediate, as well as the emotions of the man: the Vampire's eyes turned carmine red and the canines popped threateningly out, scaring the other one to death.  
"No, looking for FOOD." He roared, grabbing the big man by the throat and lying him down like a ragdoll on the ground, exploding in a gloomy laugh.  
His bloody irises had met mine in a ruthless invitation.  
"Which part do you want?" He asked me, sincerely amused by the useless fight the victim under him was opposing.  
I got down on my knees in front of him, unable to say a word.  
"It's better from the neck, but since you're still inexperienced, I think it's best if you start with the wrist."  
Hearing those words, the guy had desperately tried to stand up to escape, but Carter kept him, without the slightest effort, anchored to the sidewalk.  
"You're not thinking about killing him. . . ?" I exhaled, trying not to be too loud, or it could have gotten worse.  
Carter looked me right in the eye before he told me:  
"You know there is no other choice. And trust me, he deserves it."  
He settled a violent kick between the ribs of the supine man, leaving him breathless for a few minutes, warning him not to move the slightest muscle.  
"So, which one do you want?" He asked me again, suggesting that I should have decided quickly.   
With my mind and mouth completely detached from the rest of my body, I murmured in a barely audible tone: "The arm."  
Letting my new nature speak for me.  
With a smug grimace, Carter had brought me his right limb, the palm of his hand facing the night sky.  
I stared at that wrist, dark and powerful, and under my ravenous gaze his veins had manifested to me, big and pulsating.  
A vague, sudden pain struck me on the inside of my lips: my fangs had sprouted out, unsheathed and ready to be used.  
The man was screaming, probably inhumanly, but to my ears came only distant sounds, barely audible, overwhelmed by the roar of blood that was pumping into his vessels.  
A stream of saliva dripped from my teeth on his skin, as I was slowly carrying that divine gift to my mouth.  
An intense and pungent smell reached my nostrils, like a powerful slap, wavering my thoughts, obscuring my reason.  
I passed my tongue over his skin, relishing the taste: I had no idea what the oriental blood had in itself to make it peculiar, but that man's blood, a Hispanic, apparently, had undoubtedly its own attractiveness.  
Inspiring slightly, more out of human habit than of real necessity, I identified the vein on the wrist, sensually beating before my irises in a silent invitation, and I sunk the canines there to the root.  
As soon as I had pulled them back, the blood flooded violently straight into my throat, causing an involuntary spasm, after which the walls of the vase had collapsed on themselves, preventing the fluid from continuing to leak.  
Realizing on the fly what I had to do, casting a side glance at Carter, who was bent in half on the guy's neck, I bit him again, this time ferociously sucking, shivering at the strong pleasure that the hot fluid gave me.   
Strange lights appeared in the back of my eyelids, accompanied by different sounds, melodious and perturbing, dragging me into an inexplicable ecstasy, making me grumble against the wounds.  
At a certain point, I felt a mind dancing in unison with mine: it was Carter's, which I could clearly feel through the blood, intoxicated in turn with carnal satisfaction.  
The Hispanic, in the midst of that strange menage a trois, had violently sighed and trembled, muttering inconsistent words in what seemed to be a Mexican dialect, until his heart became weaker and weaker, almost stopping.  
I felt a strong push on my shoulder: it was Carter, who was ordering me to stop.  
"Why?" I growled, surprising myself, forcing myself away from him, recovering only by means my own lucidity.   
I was as hard as marble stone, and not just in the middle of my legs: the frenzy had taken over my body, and it would have taken me some time to fully recover from it.  
"He must not die like this." Carter replied in a harsh voice, distractedly cleaning his lips, moving himself to sit on top of the man, caressing his face with trembling, uncontrolled hands.  
"What do you want to do?" I asked him confused, unable to think clearly.  
"Shh" he had shut me up, circling the other's face with his hands, slowly bending over him.  
The Hispanic, still numbed in the senses by our aggression, eyed the Vampire with a calm look, giving him a half smile.  
Carter had smiled back at him, leaning forward as if to kiss him, under my astonished eyes, but, at the last second, he had shifted his head to the side, breaking his neck bone in a clean cut.  
That act, raw and sudden, swept away all traces of cloudiness from my brain, bringing me back with both feet to the ground.  
"What. . . C. . . Cart. . ." I stammered, feeling my lips tremble in a convulsive way, while the horrible sound of broken bones perpetuated in my ears.  
"There was no other choice. If we had let him live, or worse, killed him by draining him, he would have become one of us. Or our servant." Carter replied, dryly, getting up with some difficulty from the ground on the still unstable legs.  
"You better get used to it." He continued, leaning forward on his knees, as if to catch his breath.  
I had imitated him, putting myself in his same position, but to recover from the upheaval: I knew it would happen, that I would kill, yet the act itself performed right before my eyes gave me a horrible feeling of disgust.  
Yet his blood, now flowing in my veins, made me feel incredibly omnipotent.  
Goddamn it.  
I felt Carter's hand coming back to look for me, but it had suddenly stiffened, almost risking to break my scapula.  
"What is happen. . . " I barely started to pronounce, when a strange restlessness hit me like a punch in the face.  
There was a presence. SOMEONE was there.  
"What is it?" I asked, alarmed, not having ever felt anything more distressing in my life, not even after the discovery of my empathy.  
"We need to leave NOW." It was all I had gotten from Carter, who immediately moved to where we'd parked our car.  
Instinctively, I followed him as he cut through the crossroads, carefully avoiding the main street.  
Once in safe inside the Land Rover, I took him by the arm, forcing him to look at me.  
"Carter. . . ?" I told him in a tone that didn't allow protests. "Was that one of us? Another Vampire?"  
The Nightcreeper looked back at me for a fraction of a second, before answering: "Yes. Bad news, really. Maybe. . ."  
"Maybe?"I pressed him, knowing that there had to be a reason for his bizarre behavior.  
"Nothing. Forget it." He had finished reluctantly, reversing and steering at full speed on the way home.


	20. Disaster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Oh, my God' I screamed in my mind, falling into panic, raising my pupils again on that hidden figure.   
> The dots were gone, as was the sense of oppression due to its proximity.   
> It was the end.   
> I was doomed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: violence, mentions of abuse, gore

After my first taste of blood, there had been many countless nights in an indistinct and chaotic whirlwind, and in the same way there had come the killings, bloody and merciless, one after the other, impossible to stop or avoid.  
The scenario changed every time, and every evening Carter taught me something new, forcing me in no uncertain terms to learn my lesson, making me in a short time totally independent about the issue of nutrition.  
Although I still couldn't define humans as simple food, nor had I yet managed to accept the idea of no longer being part of their race, I however submitted to the orders of my 'master', listening, understanding and refining my empathy, exploiting it for hunting.  
That was until one night, when I found myself in a dark alley, with the smashed skull of a woman in my hands.  
An insignificant murderous bitch, unworthy of even the slightest breath, I knew it well, I had read it in her emotions and in her body, yet the act and that horrible, gruesome noise of broken bones had echoed for a long time in my mind and ears.  
Her gaze, her miserable life that slid away between my fingers. . . had hit me straight in the stomach, ferocious as the bite of a wolf, tearing me apart, deep inside.  
I had cried, with an abandonment and a horror, a despair, that I could have never imagined before, feeling my arms and wrists trembling, the ground missing from under my feet, as if there had been no tomorrow.  
I had remained outside, far from Carter, until dawn, sitting on the beach where I myself had died weeks before, staring vacuously at the sea, swollen and icy due to the strong winter winds.

What have I become?   
Why did I do that?   
Could turning me into such a monster eventually lead me to Noel's killer? Was it right what I was doing, or maybe it was all madness, a filthy act of selfishness, which could only bring greater evil into the world?   
I didn't know, and the sea didn't answer me that time.   
When I returned, running away from the first weak morning rays, Carter had squared me carefully, without telling me a word anyway, noticing my eyes and the lines of blood that crossed my cheeks, limiting himself to give me a slight pat on the shoulder and to slip with the grace of a cat in his coffin.   
I was a murderer. I was just like everyone else.   
Like them. 

After, so to speak, the first dismay, Carter had led me hunting the fallowing nights, making me carefully choose the victim, and leaving me, using his words, 'the pleasure of finishing', once we had both been fed.   
It was horrible and crazy: each of them died differently, shouting, screaming, crying, begging, every possible and imaginable range of sounds, smashing my heart into my chest, and every time a part of my sanity died with them, until, out of necessity and self-defence, I had understood how to get away from the situation and from the moment itself, looking from a corner of my reason at my hands closing murderously on their limbs.   
So, as atrocious as it was to admit it, I had really gotten used to that repulsive act and, over time, my ears had closed to their death chants.   
Soon I had stopped going out with Carter, preferring to wander only with the darkness of my thoughts, passing from alley to alley scrutinizing and perceiving the emotions of the unfortunate who crossed my path, choosing them with care, killing them mechanically with the languor of a somnambulist.  
As the nights went by, my powers as a Vampire, as a result of my diet, had also increased, making me able to crawl like a snake along the walls, even though I still couldn't dematerialize myself or morph into some kind of animal.   
Actually, I wasn't even sure that I would ever be able to do it: as Carter said, the powers of each Vampire were distinctive and different, and rarely did the Nightcreepers have exceptional powers, like those of my partner, or even just my empathy, so I could already consider myself 'lucky' for what I had, even the fact of being made by Carter could have been significant.   
"Not at all." One night the black haired had denied, with his eagle nose stuck between the pages of a Lovecraft tome.   
Living with him had allowed me to discover some hidden sides of his persona: for example, he read a lot, something I would never have bet a single penny on before.   
"No?" I had distractedly replied, scribbling a portrait of a woman on a piece of paper with a pencil. I missed painting. Maybe I could have persuaded Carter to take a tripod and a few brushes into the mound. After all, most of the objects that were there were his, and that was also my 'home' now.   
"No." He had finished lapidary, and that's all he had to say.   
I had looked at him in silence for a few moments, finally deciding to ignore him, continuing to trace lines on my piece of paper.   
"I can't stand you." I had murmured unintentionally at the end, angrily clutching the pencil in my fist, making it creak dangerously under my strong fingers.  
Carter had raised an eyebrow between the surprised and the amused in my direction, while continuing to turn the pages of his book.   
"You always have to be mysterious. Why is that? What's there to hide, you wanna tell me? You drive me crazy, you always want to know everything and yet never tell anything in return!" I unbuttoned, throwing the pencil on the ground and ragingly exiting of the crypt.   
I had taken a few quick steps, stopping in front of a tombstone with the effigy of an angel with long, wavy hair in a submissive position of penance.   
It was a disaster.   
Everything was going wrong. I was dead. My parents had lost both their children within the same year: I hadn't seen them since my brother's death, and even after mine I had refrained from looking for them, knowing for certain that seeing them again would lend a blow in my chest.   
I myself, although suspended in a kind of universe between life and non-life, had turned into a murderous monster of the worst kind, and went on without a real purpose.   
I had to stay hidden. I couldn't look for Noel's killer.   
All I was allowed to do was continue to pretend, night after night, that I still had some semblance of existence, sleeping, eating, wandering in silence through a world that no longer belonged to me, without anyone there to help me, to understand and listen to me.   
I was nothing.   
"You are so melodramatic sometimes." I was caught unaware by Carter. He must have followed me out of the grave.   
"Leave me alone!" I growled, making to leave, but he held me by the arm.   
"Reiko" he called me. "I know it's difficult, but this is the current situation." He tried to explain to me, but only managed to get me further irritated.   
"Thank you very much!" I had sassed, forcing myself out of his grip, walking away a few steps from him.   
"I'm. . . I'm sorry!" He said louder, making me stop point blank.  
I turned to him incredulously, not believing my ears: it was not in Carter's personality to come and ask for forgiveness.   
"I know I haven't been honest with you, hiding my past from you, but. . . it's not easy. I've never talked about it with anyone, and even now. . ." he had left the sentence in abeyance, without completing it, lowering his very deep eyes to the ground covered by ice and snow.   
"Carter, this is not good. You know that?" I had pointed out to him, but felt his confusion, and returned to approach him.   
"Yes. . . yes, I know." He nodded, his eyebrows furrowed, conflicted.  
Part of him clearly wanted to get rid of that burden, but there was an immense darkness in the depths of his soul that prevented him from talking about it.   
"What's bothering you?" I had pressed him, stopping a few inches from him, our faces very close, so close that I could clearly see the violet facets in the black of his irises.   
Carter had taken a strange expression, almost remote, while tormenting the piercing that crossed his lower lip. A small drop of blood had fallen from the stud on his chin, and he had distractedly collected it with his thumb.   
"You'd hate me if I told you, so I can't do that." He answered in a low voice, staring at the small red spot that contrasted sharply on his diaphanous skin.   
Contrary to that statement, I had grabbed his left arm, considering my options: I could not let him go on like this again, leaving me without answers.   
I had lowered my gaze on his finger for a fraction of a second, then gently carried it to my mouth, licking away the blood with the tip of my tongue, trembling slightly, without ever taking my brown eyes away from his.   
I had seen his pupils dilate slightly, his determination wavering, but then, suddenly, he had taken his hand off mine, withdrawing into his shell of solitude.  
"I said no! Stop." He whispered, returning on his footsteps inside the tomb, leaving me alone and defeated in the bare landscape. 

Since then, Carter had avoided me like the plague, disappearing into thin air always before my awakening, as daylight faded.   
When I went back to bed, however, I found his coffin already closed, a clear symptom of his thoughts, perceiving very well the fact that he was still awake, even if his emotions seemed veiled by a black mantle that prevented me from sensing his thoughts, or even remotely trying to communicate with him.   
Taken by anger and despair, I had decided to ignore him in turn, preferring isolation to the company of a lying jerk.   
I had thus put myself on the hunt that night too, paying great attention not to meet other Nightcreepers on my way, remaining hidden in the shadows, going through the slums.   
Turbulences of voices and reflections had reached my brain and ears, and I had scanned them one by one, with great effort, looking for the person who was right for me.   
Finally, a disturbing and bloody sensation had reached my innards: a middle-aged man, a few meters from me, in the alley next to me.   
He was a murderer, and he was, most likely, a schizophrenic: I could clearly distinguish the different personalities that burned in his chest, consuming him to the bone, wearing him down in reason until pushed to insanity.   
He was going to be my victim that night.   
Determined and satisfied, I had accelerated the pace in his direction, turning at the first corner in the right direction, when a sense of violent anguish had hit me fully in the mouth of the stomach, making me tremble all over.   
There was another vampire there.  
Looking forward, I had closed my eyelids and counted mentally up to five, to calm myself down, after which I had carefully evaluated the situation.   
He must have noticed my presence too, however this seemed not to have disturbed him at all, since he continued to proceed safely and decisively in my direction.   
Goddamn it.   
I could not risk being seen: had they discovered my new nature, chaos would have broken out in both worlds.   
Unable to dematerialize myself, I looked around frantically: I was in a dead end, the road from which I had come had no direct access, and the rest of the alley was surrounded by very high walls, which made it impossible for any attempt at rapid escape.   
Fine. All I could do was make a choice.   
Following one of the first advices Carter (Ha!) had given me, I had found a very narrow gap between the load-bearing walls of two adjacent houses, and there I shrunk, crawling with as much grace and agility as I could along the filthy wall, until I rose to a few floors from the ground, holding my breath.   
Not even a moment later, the other vampire came out into the street, looking around catiously.   
He knew I was there.   
"Hey, man!" He grunted at me in a harsh and unpleasant voice. "This is my territory, so piss off, you hear me?"   
Although he did not understand exactly where I was, he clearly felt my presence, just as I perceived his.   
Disturbed by the fact that, despite the call, I had not moved even the slightest muscle, nor had I answered him, he had taken two more steps, entering under the light of the only streetlight, which created a fluorescent cone of light in the darkness of the alley.   
"Shit!" I had exhaled, recognizing him: it was Randall Markkula, one of the worst Nightcreepers around, and, in fact, he'd been on my Vigilante list for a very long time, right under Jesse's name.  
Randall was Finnish, as tall as a basketball player, with very blond hair, Nordic features and a large scar that cut an eyebrow symmetrically into two parts.   
A bad seed indeed, disowned even by his own race for the deviated inclinations he had: he liked his preys young, far TOO young.   
"Shit" I had repeated between my teeth, not knowing what to do: Randall knew my face well, we had met on several occasions, albeit only in passing. If I'd come out of my hideaway, he'd have exposed me without batting an eyelash.   
"So? In what language should I tell you?" He was barking in the meantime, making me sweat cold.   
Of all the places, I never, ever expected to meet him there. How was that even possible? Knowing the unripe age of his victims, Randall used to stalk playgrounds or organized parties, you rarely saw him wandering in the alleys.   
"Are you really trying to piss me off?" He had growled, grinding his ugly fangs, while his irises began to shine with a dark reddish glow.   
Nothing good was about to happen, Randall was a Nightcreeper with a discreet hypnotic power, with which he normally convinced his young preys to follow him, so I should have been careful not to stare him directly into the eyes, or I (even though I was now dead) could have ended up in trouble as well.   
"All right, buddy."He nodded to himself, losing his temper. "I'll come looking for you."  
He had moved in my direction, but something had suddenly stopped him in his path, making him turn in a completely different way: the door of a house had suddenly opened and two kids had come out with a ball under their arm.   
Holding back an exclamation, I had thrown a quick glance at my wristwatch (it was nine o'clock, they must have just finished dinner), after which I looked back at the two children, who were heading straight into the arms of the Vampire.  
"Oh, no!" I had whined, noticing the horrible expression of pure complacency that had flourished on Randall's face: he seemed to have seen his favorite toy and, judging by the vermilion flashes emitted by his pupils, he was more than ready to go on the attack.   
He bent over his knees, greeting with warmth the two little boys, who had stared at him with curiosity.   
"No, don't look him in the eyes, oh, shit. . . " I was desperate, unable to stand still and shut up where I was, imagining what was going to happen.   
The children had innocently smiled at Randall, unaware of his evil ability, when suddenly one of them had dropped the ball on the ground, which had rolled behind some garbage cans, without causing the slightest interest of anyone.   
Too late.   
Randall had opened his huge arms and held one of the saffron-haired little ones to his chest, resting his lips on his tender neck in a terrifying parody of a father's kiss.   
I couldn't let that happen.   
Driven by horror and inhuman ferocity, I literally catapulted myself from my hiding place, landing on the blond bastard's head, locking his neck in a mortal grip, forcing him to let go of the boy.   
"What the hell?!" The maniac yelled, surprised, expecting nothing like that.   
"Shut up, you fucking pervert!" I hissed him, trimming a big knee in his side. "Run! RUN!" I had shouted as loudly as I could at the children, to make sure to wake them from the ecstatic stupor.   
The two of them had looked at me frightened, in shock from the sudden fright, then had followed their instincts and ran home.   
By then Randall had risen on his elbows, dragging me with him, in an irate roar, turning to stare at me like a lion ready to tear me apart.   
"What the hell is wrong with you?" He screamed, but immediately stopped, recognizing the shape of my face.  
"The Vigilante. . . ?" He whispered, confused.   
"That's right, Randall. I see you still remember my name." I'd said, keeping by the nearest shadow, no matter how useless it was.   
"But. . . I thought you were dead! They said Carter had. . ."  
"What, managed to kill me? Not exactly" I had giggled in a gloomy tone, looking around frantically: the situation was definitely taking a bad turn, I had to cut corners as soon as possible.   
"But you. . . you are. . . a Vampire!" He spat, looking at me carefully, as if to make sure.   
"Good guess" I had mocked him, noticing a large rotten wooden beam at a short distance from my feet.   
"No way! Who. . . ?" He had asked, standing up in all his height. "Who turned YOU? Who did this? You can't be one of us, for fucks' sake!" He started to advance threateningly, clenching his fists until his knuckles turned white.   
"Randall. . . let's talk about it. . . let me go. . . " I had retreated a few steps, knowing that I had no way out anyway: Randall could crawl as much as I did, if not better, on the walls, so that escape was barred, and it was also the only one.   
"Whose side are you on, Vigilante? You can't be one of us and march against our race." He grabbed me by the neck, slamming me into the cold stone behind us.   
"Randall, please. . . I'm not. . . in. . . " I had stuttered, forgetting that I didn't really need to breathe at all.   
"WHAT? You're in enough trouble already, man, you've gotten in my way, you've let my dinner go, rest sure I'll fix you up for good!" He'd brought his face closer to mine, grinning in a macabre way. "I wonder if Trevor is still interested in having your head. . . " he had snickered, scrutinizing me from head to toe.   
Fuck. I was screwed.   
"Let go of me, Randall." I had intimidated him, threatening him, but without knowing exactly how to act.  
At that point, a confrontation was inevitable, but if I had killed him, I would have earned the death sentence from the entire Nightcreepers world.   
"Why, otherwise what would you do? Kill me?" He laughed at me, as conscious as I was of the problem. "Let me tell you a secret. . ." he whispered, leaning over my earshell. "If I died, it would be the end of you. But if I were to obliterate YOU. . . well, I doubt anyone would come crying on your grave."   
He had taken to staring me in the eyes with his cerulean ones, filled with mockery and contempt, attemptinh to bewitch me, but I had quickly turned my gaze upwards, avoiding a direct exchange. It probably wouldn't have worked on my new persona, but I didn't intend to take that risk: I had stood still long enough.   
"Don't you dare." I had said slowly, as a last warning, but the blond had shaken his head and increased the grip on my lapel.   
"Fine." I had growled, discovering the canines in a strange caricature of Carter's intimidating air, throwing a big kick at him in the shin, freeing me from his grip.   
Randall had bent slightly downwards, where I had hit him, giving me the opportunity to knee him again, this time straight on the nose, which had broken in a roaring crack.   
Had I been still a human, I probably wouldn't have even scratched him, but with the strength of an undead, it was a whole different matter.   
"What is it, Randall, did I give you the boo-boo?" I asked him, kicking him on the kidneys and sending him to his knees on the ground.   
In response, the bastard had tripped me, lying me on my back to the ground.   
"Shit. . . " I had mumbled, just before I got a violent punch in the ribs, which had broken instantly, making me see white for two seconds.   
"Stupid. . . you just got turned, what do you think you know?" The Finnish had commented, grabbing my hair and repeatedly crashing my head on the asphalt below.  
With my mind completely clouded, I had moved my hands blindly, desperately trying to gut his face with my fingernails, centering a soft thing that must have been his eye.   
Randall had screamed inhumanly, bringing one hand to his orbit and slapping me with the other.   
"Fucking bastard, my eye!" He shouted, grabbing me by the throat and squeezing until the bones of the larynx crumbled. "I'll take you to Trevor in such small pieces that he'll have to have fun recomposing the puzzle!"  
He had moved his right hand from my neck to my left arm, breaking my fingers one by one.   
Crack, the thumb.   
Crack, the index.   
With tears in my eyes, I had brought the only limb that had remained free and unharmed above my head, grasping the area all around, looking for any improper weapon that could have helped me.   
Crack, the middle finger.   
My still healthy hand moved frantically, between dirt and excrement, praying in a miracle.   
Crack, the ring finger.   
Finally, it had closed on something solid and moist, which had pierced part of my palm as I grabbed it.   
The rotten piece of wood I'd seen before.   
Crack, the pinkie was gone, too.   
"Say your prayers, Vigilante, the gates of Hell are about to open up for you." He announced me, pulling a long knife out of one of his trouser's pockets.   
"First your head, then I'll take care of the rest." He had laughed gutturally, rolling his shoulder back to hit me and exposing himself enough to allow me to attack him.   
Without delaying a minute, I had firmly grabbed the wood in my fist and I had stuck it with all my strength between his ribs, approximately at the height of his heart.  
Randall had accused the hit with a strange air of amazement on his face. By the time he had lowered his gaze with his remaining eye, his death had already begun: the lower part of his body had become ash-colored, followed later by the upper half which had dissolved into a shower of greyish dust, under the sound of his helpless screams.   
The peg had fallen free on me, vaguely stained with blood, dark and dense, in a dull thud, while the cold night breeze washed away his remains from my clothes.   
I had laid motionless for a few moments, trying to dominate the agitation and atrocious pain that still echoed in my veins, closing my eyelids, gulping unsuccessfully, ending up vomiting a large bunch of reddish saliva.   
I had brought my healthy hand to my throat, feeling how unnaturally yielding and tender it was: he hadn't killed me, but I certainly wouldn't have been able to speak for days.   
After the first shock, I wiped the dirt from my cheeks, hoisting myself up to sit with superhuman effort, holding my injured arm to my chest, looking around.   
It was strange, Randall was definitely dead, yet I still felt a strange anxiety coming all around. . .   
I had looked up at the roofs, looking for the starry sky, and I almost had a stroke: two crimson dots, dark and bright, were looking at me, hidden in the dark.   
It wasn't Carter, it wasn't him at all, but whoever it was must have seen EVERYTHING.   
"No!' I thought, realizing what had just happened.   
I killed a vampire, the inviolable number one rule of the Nightcreepers'; world.   
'Oh, my God' I screamed in my mind, falling into panic, raising my pupils again on that hidden figure.   
The dots were gone, as was the sense of oppression due to its proximity.   
It was the end.   
I was doomed.


	21. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Where are we going?' I'd asked, looking around frantically with anxiety.   
> "Far away."

After the terrible event, my huge mistake or misstep, with the capital M, winter had presented itself in all its frost and glory, covering land and sidewalks with high, soft layers of snow, sweeping the streets with its majestic winds.  
In this white scenario, as silent as it was threatening and inert, I had spent an indefinite number of hours and days, dragging myself through the slums, looking in vain for a shelter that could provide me with some kind of protection, but without finding any.  
The whole world of the Undead certainly knew (it couldn't be any different, not to mention that I had also been SEEN): they had to be all out there looking for me, ready to tie me to a pyre and set me on fire.  
I had committed the worst of misdeeds, in a universe where no other rules existed but that of mutual respect, nothing could ever overcome such an affront: I was doomed, I had no way out.  
With these thoughts, wounded and vulnerable, I wandered around the outskirts of the city, trying to dominate fear.  
I felt a thousand evil eyes on me, ready to betray and judge me, to spy on my every move, lurking in the shadows waiting to assault me at the most favourable moment.  
I had wandered and walked for so long, without destination, without even daring to return to Carter: I would never have the courage to look him in the face, him, whom not even a week before had unequivocally told me to give up my task, my only reason to live.  
'You can no longer be the Vigilante' he had said 'because now you are one of us, and as such you will no longer be able to do the things you did before.'  
What did I do? Of all the reckless actions that I had, particularly in recent months, carried out, this was the worst.  
Who the hell was I, after all? What the hell did I think I was doing? All I had achieved was a jumble of murders, lies and acts of supreme incapacity.  
I had let a vampire bite me and turn me into a monster, and now I ate and slept at his table as if he were my best friend, not to mention that I hadn't found Noel's murderer, and now. . . now. . . .  
It was too much. I certainly couldn't go on.  
With these dark thoughts, I had wandered in the night, fighting the icy wind that was sweeping me away and cutting the unnatural skin of my face. Even now that I was dead, I could sense how sharp it was.  
I had turned silently into an alley risking losing my balance on the ice.  
So much time that I had wasted. . . what could I do?  
What if Carter himself was on my tail, chasing me? After all, I didn't really know him. . . maybe he would have betrayed me, exploiting his supernatural contact with my mind, and sold me to the highest bidder, maybe, why not, even to Trevor.  
That bastard would've been far too happy to get my head.  
"Maybe I should." A sudden voice came out of the shadows, startling me.  
With all my senses alarmed, I had suddenly felt his presence, close and irrefutable, like the moon and the stars.  
Carter had appeared, in a plastic jump, from one of the rooftops above my head, diaphanous in face, perhaps more than normal, and, nevertheless, terribly dark and menacing.  
I had never seen him like that, not even when we had been on opposite sides, not too long ago.  
"Didn't you basically promise Trevor MY own head?" He had hissed, enraged.  
"Carter. . ." I had croaked, regretting instantly of having opened my mouth: I had forgotten about my shattered larynx. A stream of tears had immediately surged to my eyes for the piercing pain that had crossed me.  
His eyes had incinerated me, tinged with a frightening bloody red.  
"What the FUCK did you do?" He had asked me, breathing anxiously to keep a hint of control.  
My only response had been to shake my head negatively, my throat convulsely squeezed between my hands. The fractured cartilage must have moved, because now a bone fragment was piercing my tonsils, causing me to cough convulsively.  
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" He screamed again, punctuating every word.  
I had collapsed to the ground, folded back on my stomach, losing drops of reddish slime from my lips.  
"You're such a little bitch. A fool! A fucking CRETIN!" Carter kept berating me, coming like an hurricane in my direction. "Look at you! The Vigilante! What did I tell you about killing your own kind?"He'd grabbed me by the hair, clutching my head backwards, forcing me to look at him. "You, stupid, insignificant creature. . . " he had roared, throwing me forcefully to the ground.  
I got up with difficulty, under the weight of the terrible realization that had just come to me.  
"ALL of us know when a vampire dies, especially if killed by one of our own kind."  
His voice was low and freightening.  
"Now, Reiko. . ." Carter had exhaled, passing his hands over his face. "What am I supposed to do with you?"  
He had looked at me significantly, making me realize that his was just a rhetorical question. He had already decided about my destiny, and in my current conditions I could do nothing to stop him.  
'Carter. . . ' I called him in my mind, unable to do it with my own voice.  
"Don't talk in my head!" He'd warned me by extending an arm in front of him.  
Again, he had approached me where I laid, kneeling in front of me. He had stood in that position for an infinite time, forcing me to use my empathy to break those moments of sheer terror.  
However, his heart was closed. I couldn't read anything.  
"You're an outcast." He finally said, breaking the silence we had fallen into. "Do you understand that? You no longer belong to either of the two worlds, nor this, nor the Humans'."  
I closed my eyelids, devastated, nodding vaguely: I messed up, I messed up completely.  
"Wherever you will go, you'll always have to watch your back. You'll never find peace again."  
I had nodded once more, breathing forcefully through my nose: the pain was getting worse, and not only where I had been hurt.  
"So, there's only one thing left to do. . ." he had whispered almost sadly, staring at me with an indecipherable look.  
I had barred my eyes, jerking myself off the ground, grabbing Carter by the lapel of his coat, planting my brownish pupils into his, between the menacing and the inquisitorial.  
He had stared back at me without batting an eyelid, then, slowly and without apparent effort, he had detached my fingers from his coat and had folded them like twigs to the ground .  
'Carter. . . '  
"No. There isn't much time left. They'll be close by now."  
I just watched him petrified, not believing what was going on.  
Was he going to kill me again? Was that my demise?  
Under my astonished gaze, Carter had carried his wrist to his lips, cutting his vein, then offered it to me, awakening my supernatural senses like a cold shower. He must have just fed, unlike me, who hadn't in days: the smell of human blood flowing inside him was pungent and penetrating, fresh. . .  
Without even understanding my movements, I had closed my lips on him, sucking everything he had to give me. Carter had released a vague moan, drowning in ecstasy.  
He had spoken, and his words had come to me muffled, like through a thick fog: "You couldn't go very far in your condition. . . this should help." He sighed, playing distractedly with my hair.  
'I thought you were going to kill me. . . ' I had raised an eyebrow, looking at him, confused.  
"Don't be ridiculous." He'd giggled, panting slightly. I was taking too much from him.  
I had retracted my fangs, murmuring satisfied: the blood had spread rapidly in my body, warming it up, concentrating where the pain pulsed the most, in my throat.  
The bones and cartilage had miraculously repositioned, releasing my airways in a comforting way.  
"Incredible" I had whispered, surprised at the sound of my own voice, though a slight burning was still spreading in my trachea.  
"Blood, nourishment, speed up our healing abilities, especially if given by a more powerful Undead." Carter had sneered knowingly. "However, it will take you some time to heal properly."  
"Yeah. . ." I had nodded, thinking of Jesse's scarred eye.  
"We have to go." Carter had suddenly announced, standing up.  
"What? Where?!" I asked, suprised.  
"Shut up, save your voice. Just because you took the blood doesn't mean you're cured at all." He had significantly touched my Adam's apple, causing me to recoil in distress.  
"But where. . ."  
"Ssh. Listen, the whole Vampire community has been on your tail for several days now. We cannot stay here, neither you, who are guilty of having committed the worst crime in our world, nor I, for being the one who'd turned you into an Undead and should have looked after you.  
"Then what. . ."  
"We'll go far away, just to start with, and then. . ." Carted had silenced himself, turning his head, as if he had heard a distant noise. "Damn it." He'd bared his teeth in a silent growl.  
All of a sudden, I had felt a presence too, no, not one, TWO, approaching.

"Let's get the hell out of here" Carter had stated, turning away, but two red, evil eyes had appearted behind him, preventing him from leaving.  
The black haired had stood petrified for half a second, staring at the shadow in front of him with a cold glare.  
"Get out of my way!" He had then hissed, squeezing his eyes into two dark slits.  
The figure had growled rabidly in response, while behind it had manifested two other vermilion dots, at least half a head taller.  
"Out of your way?" The shady individual had thundered. "I don't think so."  
The blood I had taken from Carter had instantly frozen in my circulatory system: that hostile roar was well known to me, it was the voice of. . .  
"Trevor" Carter had muttered, preceding my thought.  
The huge vampire had come out under the streetlight in all his ugliness, and maybe he looked even worse than the last time I've seen him, when I had promised him Carter's head (or mine, in case of failure).  
"What the FUCK did you do?" The monster in question had snarled in direction of my partner, rage flashing from the crimson irises.  
Carter, surprisingly, hadn't batted an eye. It was the first time I'd seen them together, facing each other, fighting each other.  
Because of ME.  
In the meantime, Jesse had also entered the light, revealing his eyes of a different colour, one blue and the other violet: on the latter still stood out, even if much lighter and almost sealed, the scar he had gained by throwing himself from a window to escape me.  
"What the fuck is going on with your empty head?" The mountain had continued, advancing on Carter like an angry bull, planting himself a few inches from his nose.  
Again, the other one had not deigned him of an answer, remaining still to stare at him, impassive.  
"You both screwed up" Jesse got involved, looking down on me with disgust and going to position himself next to his lover. "You. . ." he had frowned, aiming at Carter. "You turned him! A vampire hunter! What the hell were you thinking? Unless. . ." he had maliciously lowered his eyelids. ". . . you were using the thing between your legs." He had blinked in an obscene way, making my skin crawl and my stomach turn upside down.  
Carter had snorted, a sympathetic grin printed all over his face.  
"And you. . . " the blonde had continued, targeting me. "You're pathetic! You promised us his head, and what did you do? You got yourself killed! Fool! Tell me, what did you think you were doing, becoming a vampire? That you could just walk around impaling others of your own kind or having them crash through windows like you did with ME?" He had shaken his head several times, gesturing theatrically.  
"Jesse, you're a poor fool." Carter had voiced, the contempt clear and unambiguous in his voice.  
The boy had looked at him, between the incredulous and the angry, before hissing like a viper and taking a step in his direction.  
"Stop" Trevor had tackled him, without too much committment, even though he knew that Carter, had he had Jesse in his hands, would have made meatballs out of him.  
"Right, keep that treacherous tongue shut in your mouth." Carter had agreed, putting himself at my side, throwing me a weird side glance. Something was wrong, but with all the emotions in him, it was rather difficult to understand what it was about.  
"Shut up Carter, you've done enough damage, already." Trevor had locked his unnatural pupils on him, staring at him in silence for a rather long time.  
Carter had held up his gaze, raising his chin with an air of defiance, and they had stayed that way for minutes, while Jesse watched them squirming like a worm, clearly irritated by the situation.  
"Don't challenge me, Trevor." My unexpected companion had finally warned, engaging in his most thretening look.  
Trevor had chuckled in a despicable way, lowering his eyes for a few seconds to the floor, before bringing them back on us.  
"You can't escape me. And just so you know, your 'little friend' here made me a promise, but apparently he didn't deliver. Not only that, but he didn't even make sure to send his own head to me, as it was in our deal, so, I really think I have an unfinished business with him." He had smiled and looked at me in a disconcerting way.  
"Trevor"; had begun Carter, but Jesse, tired of the little consideration his lover was giving him, interrupted him in the middle of the sentence, hissing:  
"Don't even think about it, punk." He'd grinded his teeth, vaguely snapping his tongue. "Your 'boyfriend' fucking took the piss. . . so now he has to pay." He had threatened, making me swallow painfully.  
"Jesse, let me do the talking." The tall vampire had grunted, irritated by the arrogance of the short bastard.  
"Trevor, Reiko is not important. If he came to you, it was just to track me down; the only unfinished business, here, is the one between us." Carter had pointed out, with a nod in my direction.  
In response, the big vampire had moved to stand a few millimetres from his pale face, pumping air from the nostrils like a raging bull.  
"Oh, and I'm sure you know far too well that the Vigilante is MY business, too. . ." he had grunted, lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper, his dark pupils fixed in the ones of my creator. "If you know what I mean." He had bitten his lower lip slightly, in a tragic parody of innocence, then had languidly hovered on Carter's right ear, where he had murmured:  
"You beat me to it, congratulations. You still have great taste. "

I had narrowed my eyes, not fully understanding what that tall dick meant with that. . . phrasing.   
Carter had vaguely 'smiled', holding Trevor's vulgar and allusive gaze with an air of sympathy (or was it perhaps complacency?) on his face.   
"Wish I could say the same to you. . ." he said, winking at the reptile behind him.   
At that point Jesse, perhaps more amazed than me by their behavior, had jumped up like a grasshopper, landing a huge punch on Carter's nose.   
Trevor, surprisingly, had turned towards the blonde, planting a rabid slap on his cheek.   
"Don't you ever do that again, Jesse." He had growled, struggling to recompose his whole bad persona.   
The boy had stared back at him with anger, ready to jump at his throat at any time, when all four of us, suddenly, had stopped, sensing a fierce threat in the air.   
"Other vampires." Had announced Jesse, like a fool, while Carter, by my side, had grabbed my hand in a vice grip, whispering:   
"There are many... too many."  
"Yeah, and they're coming for you." The bloody-eyed jerk had concluded , an air of mockery over his ugly face.   
'Shit!' I had mentally cursed, unintentionally passing my thoughts on to Carter.   
"Come on, Jesse." Trevor was ordering in the meantime, turning his back on us.   
"What?!" Jesse had shouted, furious. "We haven't even. . ."  
"Don't challenge me." The bad individual had replied in a flat tone, a tone that did not allow complaints. "Besides, I wouldn't want to be here in two minutes, unlike them." He'd smirked. "The others will take care of it."  
Having said that, he had moved quickly towards the end of the alley, on the main road, where he'd mixed among other people passing by.  
Jesse had looked at him for a moment, uncertain about what to do, his heterozygous eyes running from us back to his lover, evidently in disagreement with him.   
Trevor had taken a dry break on his way, without turning back.   
"Get your tight ass over here, Jesse, if you don't want this to be your last night." He had intimated, his voice as vibrant with anger as I had rarely heard.   
The younger vampire had frowned and poised his lips in a ridiculous downward bend, in a somewhat offended countenance. However, against his will, he had violently clenched his fists, until his knuckles had turned white, and he had moved until he'd reached Trevor, throwing a last murderous glance of pure dissatisfaction at us.   
If he could have, he would have crushed us with his own hands.   
Once the two vampires had disappeared into the night, I had turned to Carter, alarmed.   
"We have to go. NOW." He had yelled at me, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me to the other side of the alley, where he had hidden my car.   
Once on board, he had given gas and launched the Land Rover in the winter darkness, causing the chainless wheels to slide several times on the ice along the roads.   
"It's not exactly the most suitable means for an escape, but since you can't still dematerialize yourself. . ." the dark haired had murmured, eyes fixed on the obstacles in front of him.   
I had nodded, understanding his point of view.   
'Where are we going?' I'd asked in his mind, looking around frantically with anxiety.   
"Far away." Carter had answered, turning into what looked like the way to the airport. "We can no longer stay here. We'll have to be very careful, but, to start with. . ." he had pulled on breakes at a stop, to look me in the eyes for a moment. ". . . We're gonna have to leave the Country."

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed it, please leave a review!


End file.
